taxonomic coverage page

[Matt Jones]

Matthew,

I think I agree with all of your points.  Text descriptions of things 
would help if they are read.  I don't have a solution at this point.  Ideas?

Matt

Matthew Brooke wrote:
> 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
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>

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Matt Jones                                     jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Fax: 425-920-2439    Ph: 907-789-0496
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
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