POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.object-collection : New (Experimental) Index Page : Re: New (Experimental) Index Page Server Time
26 Apr 2024 01:43:07 EDT (-0400)
  Re: New (Experimental) Index Page  
From: Chris B
Date: 8 Apr 2008 19:30:28
Message: <47fc0014$1@news.povray.org>
"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:47fa23eb@news.povray.org...
> Chris B <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
>> http://lib.povray.org/searchcollection/index2.php
>
>  On the very first sight it looks good, but on closer examination
> I find some problems.
>
>  Firstly, the thumbnail images are scaled down. Most browsers do an
> absolutely awful job at scaling down images, so they look horribly
> pixelated where the browser drops pixels.

Ah. They looked ok on my screen in both IE and Firefox. I've added an option 
to change the scale and I've changed the page to use the URL to pass 
parameters, so if you change the scale and bookmark the resulting page it 
should come up in whatever scale you've bookmarked.

>  Secondly, I liked more the idea that you can see the short
> descriptions of the objects, with clear links to additional info, etc.

I've added an option to display both a short textual description and the 
graphics. See below about keeping the existing page too.

> The minuscule images on the right side of the thumbnail are not
> intuitive and don't really stand out as "you can see more information
> here".

I'm running on 1024x768 and they don't look 'very' small on my screen. Are 
you running on a higher resolution? In any case I've set it to scale the 
icons along with the thumbnails, so if you select 100% they'll show up as 
33% larger than they start off as. If they still look too small I can 
increase them by another 33% without much difficulty. I was trying to keep 
them as small as I could to cram as many as possible into the available 
screen width.

Are the meanings of the icons clear (now that you can see them)?
Is it apparent that hovering over the icons brings up the Alt text to 
explain their function, or should I add some sort of hint at the top of the 
screen?

> Also, I don't like it that you have to click on such a small
> link to get a page which just has the short description of the object.
>
>  I prefer the list with the textual descriptions, as in the original
> index page. I think that layout is ok. It just doesn't need the 
> javascript.
>
>  Perhaps there could be some link to a page which shows only the
> thumbnail images (but without scaling them!) as that index2, or something.

Yes, my plan is that this will be an extra page, so won't replace the 
existing search screen.

>  Thirdly, clicking eg. on "Games" and then "Display Selected Categories"
> gives nothing. Should give all entries below the "Games" category.

I had thought about that, but if it automatically incorporates lower 
categories whether they're ticked or not then it doesn't provide the user 
with any way to view the contents of just the higher level category. 
Whereas, doing it this way makes both possible.

Regards,
Chris B.


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