Forum — Rather serious usability issue

Re: Rather serious usability issue

null@example.com (johnvanbreda) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:19:52 +0000

Tweaking the sort order in the Taxon Find dialog would be a fairly simple change. I'll add it to the Future Developments list so hopefully it will get implemented in the not too distant future. I'd suggest using the actual name then the preferred name to define the sort order, just in case a taxon rank gets added out of synch so the rank keys are not correctly ordered.

The second issue regarding defaulting back to Unrestricted searches sounds like a bug so I've added it to the bug tracker to get fixed for version 6.9.

Re: Rather serious usability issue

null@example.com (BobS) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:49:20 +0000

It might be straightforward to use the TAXON_RANK_KEY in the TAXON_LIST_ITEM table as a sort field. This is ordered hierarchically so species (NBNSYS....28) is earlier than subspecies (....31).

Bob Saville
Lothian Wildlife Information Centre

Re: Rather serious usability issue

null@example.com (charlesroper) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:32:30 +0000

This is quite a serious problem as it has the potential to introduce errors into the database via data entry. Have a look at this screenshot (click to enlarge):

[img]http://static.flickr.com/72/187234222_8caf7e767c_t.jpg[/img]

You can see what I've done is simply typed marbled white in and got back the list of possibilities. You should also notice that I've stretched out the box so I can see what the two marbled white possibilities are from the LEPIDOPTERA list. Note how the subspecies comes first, presenting itself at the 'default' option. The problem is I see this a lot in Recorder, mainly due to the basic sorting method used. Often, the most likely choice is found at the bottom of a long list of subspecies, making the selection process laborious and error prone.

My question is, what are the options for rectifying this problem? It presents a serious usability problem, and is extremely counter-intuitive for the beginner.

Thoughts anyone?

One other issue, while I'm here. Recorder often seems to switch back to Unrestricted as the 'Restrict Searches To' type. I'll often change to Preferred, only to find it back on Unrestricted a little while later after doing something else. I've just nailed this down to searching in the dictionaries. If I click the bins icon to do a search in the taxon dictionary, it defaults the Restrict Searches To back to Unrestricted.

Charles