Notes From Nature Talk

What happened to the transcribing interface?

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy

    Now instead of marqueeing the fields appear immediately and the image can be scrolling via mouse-dragging or scaled via mousewheel or +/- buttons in the top-left corner. This seems to just have been implemented in the last couple of hours.

    Noted issues:

    1. The "Skip this record" button is missing.

    2. The fields at the bottom can't be moved

    3. I transcribed a record and afterwards the pan/zoom of the display resets so it needs to be panned/zoomed again unlike the previous interface that would stay in place.

    Posted

  • robgur by robgur scientist, admin

    This is useful feedback! We did make a change (http://blog.notesfromnature.org/2014/12/04/wanted-feedback-on-zooming-in-our-interface/) but as usual there are some smalll hiccups (we hope they are hiccups?) that hopefully will be easy enough to fix?

    Posted

  • T-M by T-M

    1. The "Discuss" button seems not to work (leads to an empty page).

    2. The explanation of the fields is always shown (there used to be a "show help text" button) needing space which could be better used for the label.

    3. If you click on "show example" the example is partially out of the screen so you can't see it completely.

    Posted

  • michaelf500 by michaelf500

    Hi

    It's nice to be able to move the image around to see bits, but it would also be good if the zoom & position settings were retained from one record to another, since the labels are usually in the same place.
    Thanks

    Posted

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy in response to T-M's comment.

    re: "4) The "Discuss" button seems not to work (leads to an empty page)."

    Nice catch; dunno how I overlooked that one... well, actually I do: I was depressed at the change so I watched a movie instead. :p "Discuss" goes to http://talk.notesfromnature.org/#/subjects/ missing the "ANNxxxxxxx" end part of the URL. I don't see where else to get it from from the page data, so I can't leave comments. If I can't leave comments on all the errors I find, there's no point in my transcribing until it's fixed unfortunately.

    The new interface is also totally incompatible with Opera 12.17, the one I was using as it's available in portable form:

    1. The + button is missing from the left (- is there)
    2. The lower half of the image is missing. Scrolling won't bring it back, instead the window itself scrolls.
    3. Mousewheeling doesn't zoom the image either so it can't be seen.

    Posted

  • michaelf500 by michaelf500

    Not specific to the new interface, but it would be nice to have a larger box for the Location, and Habitat fields, as there can be quite a lot of material to go in there (especially when a botanist has decided to list all the associated species ...), and it would be nice to be able to view all of the entered text at once to check it.

    Posted

  • michaelf500 by michaelf500

    Also, I noticed (of Firefox at least) that the 'See example' button brings up the example underneath where the data is being entered, and only the top part of it.,

    Posted

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy in response to michaelf500's comment.

    re: "the 'See example' button brings up the example underneath where the data is being entered, and only the top part of it.,"

    Confirmed... using latest Firefox now (version 34).

    Skip Record button just came back... so long Robert Kral's typewriting... yay! 😄

    Edit2: The fields at the bottom can now be moved (click/drag at the bottom below the line "Skip this field is on). The moved fields stay in place across transcriptions. Unfortunately the example window is still affixed to the same place relative to the new fields' position and still obscured by them!

    So far the only showstopper is the Discuss button URL... when that is fixed I can live with and get used to the change.

    Edit3: Discuss link now working! (Thanks robgur!) I'm now all good with the change, especially since it now works fine with Firefox's new update and no more missing images.

    Posted

  • robgur by robgur scientist, admin

    Thanks for the quick feedback! We are trying to make some changes to bring back the core stuff on the page. The Skip button is back and you can move the interface again. More to do and hopefully Discuss is back ASAP. Keep bug reports etc. coming!

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Thanks to all the users for the swift feedback, and to @robgur for responding so quickly. too! Glad to hear that this is getting updated and that the bugs are getting fixed.

    Posted

  • Kastrel by Kastrel

    Another bit of feedback: the initial popup explaining the project a bit says (last paragraph)

    "You can help us unlock these data for use by biodiversity scientists by first finding the label, selecting it via a click-and-drag, and then helping to enter the label content..."

    But we're no longer finding the label via click-and-drag, are we? At least, that doesn't seem to be possible now on the latest Chrome...

    Posted

  • robgur by robgur scientist, admin

    The "Discussion" link should now be fixed!

    Posted

  • michaelf500 by michaelf500

    Inconsistently, (again with firefox 34), there is a grey region appears which partly covers up the data entry field, and also the text in the typed fields (eg location) would overwrite rather than scroll when I reached the end of the field, so what I was typing became unreadable. Oddly this all went back to normal when I clicked the 'discuss' button to enter this comment!

    I forgot to say, this is with Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS

    Posted

  • robgur by robgur scientist, admin

    Thanks. Some kinks to work out here but hopefully quick fixes. We'll keep you posted here.

    Posted

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy

    I tested the interface on popular up-to-date browsers on Windows 7. It worked properly with:

    Chrome 39.0.2171.71

    Firefox 34

    Opera 26

    Tested at least two transcriptions in each with: pan/zoom, Discuss, Skip Record, x/9 field switching. persistent moved fields. "See example" still needs to be fixed as appears under the fields but this is a known issue.

    It did not work properly with Internet Explorer 11. The +/- zoom buttons were missing and also mousewheeling did not zoom the image so it was stuck at a size too small to read or OCR, but all other functions appeared OK. Workaround: click Discuss and right-click the image; Copy will put it in the buffer for pasting into an editor ie Paint or Irfanview. Or, of course, just use one of the other (free) browsers for transcribing.

    One further (minor) thing that I notice is that on pressing Enter in the Collection date to complete/submit the transcription, the Year dropdown opens and stays open until the next specimen record has loaded. Minor, but as we can't see our results who knows if this is causing transcribed data to be missed. It didn't do this before.

    Edit: OK, this is worthy of being called a bug. If Skip Record is clicked, it turns into Are you sure? However if the transcriber declines to skip the record and completes the transcription it remains as Are you sure? indefinitely and clicking it will skip the current record without further confirmation.

    Posted

  • robgur by robgur scientist, admin

    Very detailed and useful comments. I am passing along to Zooniverse dev team.

    Posted

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy

    Thanks. :^)

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Just found this, I LOVE the zoom, thank you so much! Although I second the comments that persisting the pan and zoom settings from one record to another would be very helpful.

    Posted

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy

    In retrospect, I actually think now that the non-persistent zoom is a good thing: by starting zoomed out it forces the transcriber to see the entire specimen sheet at once and thus not miss additional labels, ie with newer determinations, which are not adjacent to the primary label, and that would otherwise be missed if it started panned/zoomed into the bottom-right corner. I think that this is worth sacrificing a little convenience for.

    Or not? :^)

    Posted

  • michaelf500 by michaelf500

    That's a good point about persistent zoom and seeing the whole page.
    What I'd maybe like to see is a '100%' zoom button which took the zoom to what the old interface used, rather than having to scroll the mouse button, or click the + multiple times, which I find a little tedious. Or maybe I'm just lazy...

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I think Mr. Kevvy is right. Better to see the entire object at first, then decide where you want to zoom in on?

    We definitely want to be sure that we improve the Zoom functionality in general for projects going forward.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Ok, gimme some keyboard shortcuts (e.g. + for in, - for out, shift+arrow to move lots ), let me get the focus on the Country field without using the mouse, and fix the keyboard date problem, and I'll be happy.

    Oh - and please can the zoom controls be moved next to all the typing ones? Aim: reduce mouse movement.

    Basically I just hate having to use the mouse any significant amount because I'm much faster typing.

    Posted