Danbooru

Major user interface proposal

Posted under General

When you click Edit, the textbox could appear not where it does now, but on the left, in place of the tag list, with one tag per line.

Pros:
- no more underscores. I'm sick and tired of typing them.
- don't have to keep scrolling up to look at the pic and then back again
- easier to see whether a certain tag's already there, as they're all lined up

Cons:
- have to use ctrl-s or something rather than the enter key to submit
- have to work out where to put the other editable fields, and the Related Tags tool

I deleted the other cons I'd typed after realising that if fancy javascript rich-textbox code were used, we could keep the colour-coding and the ability to click the links while editing. The way wiki and tag links are updated as you type could be made more intuitive by greying-out any "?" link that's next to a blank line.

Rather than using ugly AJAX sh'nannigans to colour-code tags as you type them, the page would remember the colour of each tag that was there when you started editing. Tags you've changed or added would be black until you hit Submit - arguably another small win.

Thoughts?

Updated by jxh2154

Huh? One big tag box. Each tag separate 'cause it's on its own line.

Anyway, I forgot to mention and carefully consider the big awful confusing inconsistency between using spaces when editing and underscores when searching.

(If quote marks were used instead it might not be so bad...)

:-(

A solution for the inconsistency problem: pressing the spacebar inserts an underscore. People who don't yet know this happily keep typing them the normal way.

That sounds a little weird, but not if you consider it as just a nice optional bonus to the main idea, which is merging the editing bit with the browsing bit.

homeless_homo said:
Are you kidding me? You'd rather type have to type TWO quotation marks than a single underscore?

I was just thinking aloud.

Bah, never mind - if I still think the pros outweigh the cons after I've taken years to implement and improve it, I might bring it up again.

I should have done that in the first place.

From your description, I have to say I like the current system better.
-I don't mind the underscores, and they make it far easier to search for multiple multi-word tags than quotes would.
-Scrolling isn't that hard, and you'd likely have to do it using your system too.

The only real valid pro is that it would be easier to see if a tag was already on an image, but since the current system alphabetizes them, that's not really a problem.

If underscores are the issue, it'd be better to change to comma delimited instead of space delimited (like the artist alias list). That way it'd only be one delimiter per tag (as it is now), and you could unambiguously use space in place of underscore.

I've considered writing a greasemonkey script to do this (translating back and forth between the underscore method and a CSV method), but never got around to it. The primary reason I'd even suggest changing it at all is that from experience typing underscores is slower and more error prone (accidentally typing " " or "-") than space.

Aside from working around underscores I don't see any huge advantage to the rest of your suggestions, and major changes to the UI are distracting and confusing for the normal user. In general, I'd say if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Edit: One thing to consider with the CSV method would be our treatment of commas in tags. Right now it doesn't appear we have any, but I don't think they are explicitly banned ATM.

Updated

I oppose this, myself. I sometimes "tag" in a notepad window so I can get a bigger text window to work with, and also to write tags for an image before actually uploading it. This would make doing those much more difficult. It also seems overly complicated.

Like I said before, there's only one textbox that all the tags are in - you can still select them all and paste and stuff. They're only on different lines 'cause you've pressed enter (rather than space) after each one.

[wish I could post without bumping]

*EDIT: I'm referring to the two posts above legga's*

The last two posters sound like they haven't understood the OP too well, so I'm making a summary of the meat and bones of the proposal:

  • There still would be a single tag editing field.
  • We would use plain spaces the way we use underscores.
  • We would use line breaks the way we use spaces.
  • When one clicks edit post, the tag editing field would replace the tag list in the left.

(Sorry if you did understand)

It seems like the consensus is that it's a bit too different to what we have, and not worth the effort.

aldeayeah said:
*EDIT: I'm referring to the two posts above legga's*

The last two posters sound like they haven't understood the OP too well, so I'm making a summary of the meat and bones of the proposal:

  • There still would be a single tag editing field.

When you click Edit, the textbox could appear not where it does now, but on the left, in place of the tag list, with one tag per line.

Doesn't sound like the single tag editing field would still be there.

You still have the problem of what to do with the related tags. You'd either have to scroll to find them, or have some asinine menu pop-up. Either way they'd be far less accessible than they are now.

For images with a high number of tags, you'd likely either have to have an expanding box (which would mean scrolling around to see other tags) or a scrolling box (basically the same problem.)

1