[Clipart] stuff done today

[Nathan Eady]

"J. Alves" <alvesjmp at gmail.com> writes:

>> Sex have only two possible values (forgive me, androgynes!), so it
>> need to have only two radiobutton, instead of textbox.
>
> Hey, but if it isn't a text box then I can't write "Yes, please"
> there! :-P

I suspect there are probably other websites for that sort of thing.
Plenty of them and to spare, I shouldn't wonder.

> A couple of more serious points now...
>
> - what is supposed to go in the "avatar" text box, a URL? Should it
> show a file open control?
  
Assuming we don't mind allowing users to upload any random avatar they
want, a file open control seems like the most obvious choice here.
There should probably be a file size limit and/or a limit on the
dimensions.

Another option would be to provide a collection of avatars and let
users select one of them.  I actually did this at one point (for a
public library discussion forum, which is no longer really in use),
using mostly images from the OCAL for the avatars.  The interface was
just basically "Here are rows and columns of avatars, click the one
you want."  Let's see, I think the directory full of avatars is still
sitting here:
http://cgi.galion.lib.oh.us/forum/userimg/
(There are two or three of those that are not public domain; it
should be obvious which ones.)

However, I think we have been allowing the upload of arbitrary profile
images in the past, and to my knowledge it has not been a major
problem.  (If it becomes one, we could always give librarians the
ability to override it for a certain user.)
  
> - the sex could be one of three (or four?) choices: male, female,
> prefer not to say, other (?)

The default should be just blank or "--" (or it could be spelled out
"not specified", whatever), and then the only other options really
needed are male and female, IMO.  Anyone who feels neither of those
applies can just leave it blank/unspecified and explain the details on
their homepage.

>> It doesn't work as it does. It doesn't save all info. 

That was my experience as well.  It appears to successfully save the
change into the page, but if you load the page again it's back to the
former value.

>> Country could have standardized droplist, as we have on every
>> website :)

I don't know, that's always kind of annoyed me on most sites: the list
is so long, it's *significantly* faster to just type the name of your
country in a text box.  (Yes, I know the old "type the first letter to
autoscroll to that part of the list" trick, but you still have to
scroll through half the countries that start with U.)  Some sites
attempt to fix this by putting certain popular countries at the top of
the list, but that has its own raft of problems.

>> Sex have only two possible values (forgive me, androgynes!), so it
>> need to have only two radiobutton, instead of textbox.

There probably does need to be the option to not specify it, so a
dropdown box seems reasonable IMO.

-- 
Nathan Eady
Galion Public Library