taxonomic coverage page

[Matthew Brooke]

Matt/Perumal

More discussion...

Main page:
I wonder if the 2-column list gives users the wrong message about how to 
fill it in. For example, Matt previously said that most users will only 
fill in species, but let's consider the case where a user *does* want to 
input more than one rank for a single organism (for example, let's say 
genus=Flagellaria and species=guineensis). If user sees a table of rank 
| name values, it looks like he should go to the first line and enter 
"rank: genus, name: Flagellaria", then go to the second line and enter 
"rank: species and name: guineensis". However, we intend the user to 
enter a different description on each line. This isn't apparent until 
the user opens a dialog, but even then it's still not clear (see below). 

Dialog:
I agree with Matt's observation that the recursive dialog not being 
good, although I still find the proposed fix confusing.  The current 
layout doesn't give any cues that (a) the user is (optionally) 
describing a hierarchy (and that the ordering of the bottom list is 
significant in that sense - but is it ascending or descending??), and 
(b) exactly where the "rank" and "name" entries at the top of the dialog 
fit into that hierarchy.

I don't know if these can all be fixed with some explanation and example 
text (which no-one will read ;-), or if there is a more optimal way of 
presenting the summary table and dialog input fields (which would be the 
preferred way to go)

M




Matt Jones wrote:

> Peru,
>
> The dialog looks good and is more or less what I was thinking except 
> one thing.  I don't like the recursive dialog idea that you proposed, 
> and I think adding parent taxa could be accomodated in a single 
> dialog.  One way to do this is to make an editable list box with 
> Parent Rank and Parent Name columns, where those values are intended 
> to be edited in place (you could even add a common name column if 
> desired).  See the revised screenshot attached.  Lets discuss this.
>
> Matt
>
> Perumal Sambasivam wrote:
>
>> Hi Matt,
>>
>> Based on what I understood from your mail, I have created another mockup
>> of the taxonomic coverage page. (2 files are attached)
>>
>> Now, the page consists of a 2-col table of rank-name pairs. To 
>> add/edit an
>> entry, a new dialog is opened - here, the user can enter the taxon rank,
>> name, common name(s) and parent taxa info.
>>
>> To add parent taxa, i guess we can open the same dialog box as a 
>> child. In
>> this case, we would have a number of cascading dialog boxes for each
>> level.
>>
>> Is this close to what you were meaning?
>>
>> -Perumal
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Perumal Sambasivam
>>
>> National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
>> University of California Santa Barbara
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>