Notes From Nature Talk

Inconsistent shortcuts in herbarium, other suggestions/requests

  • jojojlj by jojojlj

    When I type in the date, usually I do something like: 05, tab, 22, tab, 1987. About 50% of the time this works flawlessly; the rest of the time it screws up either the day of the month, or the year. It seems to want to scroll, like if I hold down 1 while in the year field it'll scroll to older dates. The scrolling option is fine as long as regular typing also works (regular typing meaning 05, tab, 22, tab, 1987).

    I'd like it if the country field could be highlighted without me needing to click on it; the highlighting occurs in all the steps after the first one. That is, after I click on "start this record", I want to be able to use only the keyboard.

    Also, why is it comparatively difficult to get to United States (several clicks of the mouse or several taps of "u") when all the specimens so far are from the US? It could be a default option, that would be nice.

    Oh, and for experienced transcribers like myself, can we remove the annoying message box that asks if I need help when I want to skip a field? No I don't need help finding the specimen number, I've already done 150 records and I know what it would look like lol. Skipping ahead without complaint when I press enter would be great, or second best would be moving along once I press skip field using the mouse.

    Posted

  • tmeconverse by tmeconverse

    I have found that when I type a date too slowly, or if I make a mistake, I can usually wait a few beats and re-type and it will take it, but if I try right away, the field seems frozen, and that I have to use the scroll bar and/or the mouse. I learn something new every day, it seems, in how the system works.

    I also strongly agree with the comment about having the country field "live" when one clicks "Start this Record". I'm a touch-typist, and having to leave the keyboard to mouse over the Country field is very irritating. And once I am in the country field, to get to the United States, I hit the letter "v" on the keyboard which takes me to Vetanu (or something like that). I hit the up-arrow key three times, and that takes me to the United States and I press enter. Likewise, when a label is for a plant from Mobile county in Alabama, I hit the "a" which takes me to Alabama (then enter), and then to get to Mobile without either hitting the "m" key endless times or using the mouse to open the pick list, I hit "p" (which takes me to Perry County, then the up-arrow key four times, which will take me to Mobile County. The less one has to switch back and forth between the mouse and the keyboard, the more of these we can crank out.

    As to the first point, I agree that it would make sense for the U.S. to be at the top of list of countries right now, but if this database expands to international collections, it might be less useful. A nice compromise might be to somehow enable a transcriber to set his/her own defaults or smart keys for repetitive fields, such as, for example, being able to press one key and populate the Collector field with "Michel G. Lelong" or Country with "United States" or County with "Mobile". This could save bazillions of keystrokes.

    And finally, I agree that it would be nice to have a "Don't show me this again" option for message boxes, leaving it to the transcriber to use the help button if we need a refresher in how to do something.

    Posted

  • riskingraisin by riskingraisin

    These are all good suggestions that have come up in Bug Reports previously, but have gotten buried. Since they continue to come up, perhaps they will be prioritized for fixes.

    Sometimes you can select the "Country" field by hitting tab. This seems to work on my home computer, but not on my office computer (both with Firefox). I agree that it should be selected by default though.

    Some of us have taken to entering a space in fields that we want to skip. I think this is common enough that the science team shouldn't have a problem with it when parsing the data.

    As for repetitive fields, there are some ways to use outside software for this (see comments on ANN0000xgh).

    Just some workarounds until things can be addressed, hope they are helpful.

    Posted

  • bumishness by bumishness admin

    Just wanted to leave a comment here saying I've read this and will be implementing what I can a bit later this week. I'll write up a few details of what I can/can't fix in a bit as well.

    Posted

  • riskingraisin by riskingraisin

    Great, thanks. I promise to stop bringing up the things that you determine can't be fixed 😃

    Posted

  • bumishness by bumishness admin

    Before I dive in, I'd also like to solicit any other input on how I can smooth out and optimize the workflow. Please post your opinions here!

    Posted

  • tmeconverse by tmeconverse

    In addition to the issues of United States first (or the ability to set preferences) and the making the country tag "live" when one begins a record, I would also make the treatment of how the fields are populated the same. Specifically, if I'm filling in the date field in the year, I can type 1 9 6 3 and it will come to 1963. In I'm in the county or state or country field, only the first character "counts", so that to get to Virginia I type V twice. I'd like to be able to type VI and have it go to Virginia instead of Idaho (since the I would supersede the V). The same is true of Counties, to get to Mobile I have to type an M 6 times, or type a P and then go up 4 arrow strokes to bet to Mobile. These are small things, but they make a difference.

    Thanks for taking this on, by the way. I appreciate it.--Tom

    Posted

  • ghewson by ghewson in response to tmeconverse's comment.

    Multiple characters count for me if I type quickly enough. E.g., UN gets to United Arab Emirates, MO gets to Mobile.

    Posted

  • riskingraisin by riskingraisin

    Lots of suggestions on this older thread.

    Posted

  • jojojlj by jojojlj

    It would also be cool if you could display a full picture of the plant we've just transcribed, after we finish a record, for maybe a second or so before moving on to the next one. It would add to the feeling of accomplishment.

    Posted

  • jojojlj by jojojlj

    Oh, and another small bug I noticed (no pun intended). After I highlight the box for transcription, when I click "start record" sometimes it doesn't respond. If I click within the highlighted area that jumpstarts it into transcription mode or whatever you call it.

    Posted

  • bumishness by bumishness admin

    I have a few things I'll be implementing shortly that I wanted to share with you folks.

    • Don't show introductory text popup on subsequent visits
    • Properly focus country when starting to transcribe a record
    • Allow a preference to be set to disable the "Skip Field" tooltip.

    While I'd love to implement something to help with repetitive input, I don't think I have time to do it justice. Some folks have pointed out external software that can help (more at ANN0000xgh).

    States actually can be found just by typing, but the way to do so is by their postal abbreviation. So Virginia would be "VA". More can be found here. I'm open to opinions if this makes sense or not.

    Same with all the dates and any other dropdowns. Note that this is built-in browser functionality. Typing 1 9 6 3 while having the year field should get you to 1963. Again, this isn't anything specific to notes, but works in any web form. I really want to help solve any problems here, but there isn't much I can do.

    So in the short term I'm looking to save everyone as many clicks and as much aggravation during the transcription process as possible. I do want to solve the wildly inconsistent badge behavior and other bug reports of inaccurate personal transcription progress, but those will be in the next few weeks.

    Posted

  • ghewson by ghewson in response to bumishness's comment.

    Thanks for this, your suggestions look good.

    Less important than the focus on country in Herbarium, please remember too the focus on End Month in Calbug.

    Are you saying that states can be found now by their postal abbreviation, because that doesn't work for me. I don't think it would be worth implementing, if that's what you're saying.

    Anything you can do to remove/reduce the need for mousing would be good. E.g., on the first Herbarium record of a session I have to pull down on the scroll bar to see the label underneath the text saying "Click and drag a square...". Or would that be covered by your "Don't show introductory text popup on subsequent visits"?

    Posted

  • bumishness by bumishness admin

    Updated a few things between Herbarium and Calbug today:

    • Only show intro popup to first time user
    • Move initial position of Herbarium interface elements around
    • Correctly highlight both Herbarium country field and Calbug End Month field

    I'll be adding the preference to stop showing the tooltips today as well.

    Posted