gpssearch improvment

[Gabriel Voicu]

Hi everyone,

As you may have seen, I've start changing gpssearch from the oldversion using marble to the new version using libkmap. Now, me and Michael have came with some ideas about how this should look, but if you think that we should change something, please let us know. I will copy/paste fragments from an e-mail from Michael because he explained very well the options and comment on them.

" We have to think about how the user actually performs a search. In the current implementation, he has to control+left-click to start a search rectangle. With the thumbnails shown even before a search is started, I see two ways:

1a) Still using some sort of selection rectangle. Since we can probably not handle the control modifier on mouse clicks in the Google Maps backend, we could instead introduce 'mouse modes'. By this, I mean buttons which change what the mouse does. In the old search there are already mouse modes like 'Pan', 'Select', 'Filter' and 'Zoom'. We could make a 'Start search rectangle' mouse mode, where the user clicks a button, then clicks on the map, and a rectangle appears as he drags the mouse. This should be doable in both Marble and Google Maps.

1b) Obviously, users will try clicking on thumbnails. They would probably expect to then see the images belonging to the thumbnail in the album. There are two issues with this:

1b1) Currently, the map search albums are rectangular lat/lon areas. The grouped images, however, are not rectangular areas in some cases, because if there are some images left between two groups, they are given to one of the adjacent groups. So if a user clicks on a thumbnail indicating 100 images, depending on how we define the rectangle, he may get more or less images.

1b2) If a user has clicked on one image, then clicks on another, do we only show images belonging to the new click? Or do we add some sort of way to do 'control+click' to add to the existing selection? To handle this, we will need multiple search areas at once and will have to extend the map search album code."

Taking in consideration his good analysis, I've thought that it should be better to keep the rectangle selection because it's more precise than the group selection. Another positive thing about rectangle selection would be the the small amount of actions to select photos(2 clicks and some mouse movement vs (number of groups) * clicks). Is this OK for you?

Another thing would be:

"2) Now let's say a user has made a selection, either using a rectangle or by clicking on a thumbnail. We then create a map search album from the coordinates. What should happen on the map? Do we hide all other markers outside of the selection? Or do we just gray them out?

3) Interaction with the images in the search range: Currently, you can easily filter the album view by clicking on a thumbnail. I find this quite useful, because you can quickly refine a search to have a look at some images, without having to do a new selection. So I would like to keep this possibility. Another thing we offer is selecting images on the map, and making this selection correspond to the selection in the album view. Not sure how much this is actually used.

4) If we hide the images outside the search range, we can make the points noted in 5) easier by removing the database based marker tiler from the kmap, and instead showing the images from the model displayed in the album view. If we get access to a selection model, many things are already solved. We then only have to implement filtering."

I find hiding the selected markers/thumbnails outside selection the best and easy way to do it, as Michael said. It would be more faster(less transactions to database) and it's more intuitive for the user. Also, please let me know if you are OK with this.

Best Regards,

Gabriel Voicu

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[Gilles Caulier-4]

Some remarks before to respond properly to your questions :

1/ There is no map settings used by default (save and restore this
settings is important there). Typically, i cannot see a map view in
this sidebar, until i set one in right menu.

2/ With Googlemaps and marble, if i click to a group of items, nothing
happen in icon view.

3/ sidebar tab layout : i recommend to add an horizontal splitter to
be able to resize map view and map search album list with large
screen. It will improve usability.

4/ I'm not able to make a selection with googlemaps, as with marble.

5/ CTRL + mouse left button create a selection rectangle on canvas.
It's fine, but nothing happen on icon view.

I use marble from KDE 4.4.3 (marble 0.9.3).

2010/7/26 Gabriel Voicu <[hidden email]>:

> Hi everyone,
>
> As you may have seen, I've start changing gpssearch from the oldversion
> using marble to the new version using libkmap. Now, me and Michael have came
> with some ideas about how this should look, but if you think that we should
> change something, please let us know. I will copy/paste fragments from an
> e-mail from Michael because he explained very well the options and comment
> on them.
>
> " We have to think about how the user actually performs a search. In the
> current implementation, he has to control+left-click to start a search
> rectangle. With the thumbnails shown even before a search is started, I see
> two ways:
>
> 1a) Still using some sort of selection rectangle. Since we can probably not
> handle the control modifier on mouse clicks in the Google Maps backend, we
> could instead introduce 'mouse modes'. By this, I mean buttons which change
> what the mouse does. In the old search there are already mouse modes like
> 'Pan', 'Select', 'Filter' and 'Zoom'. We could make a 'Start search
> rectangle' mouse mode, where the user clicks a button, then clicks on the
> map, and a rectangle appears as he drags the mouse. This should be doable in
> both Marble and Google Maps.

I like the mouse modes. dragging selection rectangle will be nice too...

>
> 1b) Obviously, users will try clicking on thumbnails. They would probably
> expect to then see the images belonging to the thumbnail in the album. There
> are two issues with this:
>
> 1b1) Currently, the map search albums are rectangular lat/lon areas. The
> grouped images, however, are not rectangular areas in some cases, because if
> there are some images left between two groups, they are given to one of the
> adjacent groups. So if a user clicks on a thumbnail indicating 100 images,
> depending on how we define the rectangle, he may get more or less images.

This depand of projection mode over the canvas, and the precision of
selection, due to zoom level. If yes, why not to introduce an average
of selected zone to query DB to limit error prone ?

>
> 1b2) If a user has clicked on one image, then clicks on another, do we only
> show images belonging to the new click? Or do we add some sort of way to do
> 'control+click' to add to the existing selection? To handle this, we will
> need multiple search areas at once and will have to extend the map search
> album code."

Do you confuse search geolocation tool on the left and geolocation
viewer on the right ?

>
> Taking in consideration his good analysis, I've thought that it should be
> better to keep the rectangle selection because it's more precise than the
> group selection. Another positive thing about rectangle selection would be
> the the small amount of actions to select photos(2 clicks and some mouse
> movement vs (number of groups) * clicks). Is this OK for you?
>
> Another thing would be:
>
> "2) Now let's say a user has made a selection, either using a rectangle or
> by clicking on a thumbnail. We then create a map search album from the
> coordinates. What should happen on the map? Do we hide all other markers
> outside of the selection? Or do we just gray them out?

gray ou sound like fine for me. How other similar search map tools
work in this case ?

>
> 3) Interaction with the images in the search range: Currently, you can
> easily filter the album view by clicking on a thumbnail. I find this quite
> useful,

me too.

>because you can quickly refine a search to have a look at some
> images, without having to do a new selection. So I would like to keep this
> possibility. Another thing we offer is selecting images on the map, and
> making this selection correspond to the selection in the album view. Not
> sure how much this is actually used.
>
> 4) If we hide the images outside the search range, we can make the points
> noted in 5) easier by removing the database based marker tiler from the
> kmap, and instead showing the images from the model displayed in the album
> view. If we get access to a selection model, many things are already solved.
> We then only have to implement filtering."
>
> I find hiding the selected markers/thumbnails outside selection the best and
> easy way to do it, as Michael said. It would be more faster(less
> transactions to database) and it's more intuitive for the user. Also, please
> let me know if you are OK with this.
>

no idea. i need to have a demo or better to see this feature in action
on my computer.

Gilles
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[Gabriel Voicu]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Gilles Caulier <[hidden email]> wrote:

Some remarks before to respond properly to your questions :

1/ There is no map settings used by default (save and restore this
settings is important there). Typically, i cannot see a map view in
this sidebar, until i set one in right menu.

Yes, I didn't add a map backend as default because of database work. I will add this in the future commit.
 

2/ With Googlemaps and marble, if i click to a group of items, nothing
happen in icon view.

3/ sidebar tab layout : i recommend to add an horizontal splitter to
be able to resize map view and map search album list with large
screen. It will improve usability.

OK, I will add one.
 

4/ I'm not able to make a selection with googlemaps, as with marble.

5/ CTRL + mouse left button create a selection rectangle on canvas.
It's fine, but nothing happen on icon view.

I use marble from KDE 4.4.3 (marble 0.9.3).

Yes, the selection is not working now because it's work in progress. I've asked you all this questions before implementing to see if you all agree with my changes.
 

2010/7/26 Gabriel Voicu <[hidden email]>:

> Hi everyone,
>
> As you may have seen, I've start changing gpssearch from the oldversion
> using marble to the new version using libkmap. Now, me and Michael have came
> with some ideas about how this should look, but if you think that we should
> change something, please let us know. I will copy/paste fragments from an
> e-mail from Michael because he explained very well the options and comment
> on them.
>
> " We have to think about how the user actually performs a search. In the
> current implementation, he has to control+left-click to start a search
> rectangle. With the thumbnails shown even before a search is started, I see
> two ways:
>
> 1a) Still using some sort of selection rectangle. Since we can probably not
> handle the control modifier on mouse clicks in the Google Maps backend, we
> could instead introduce 'mouse modes'. By this, I mean buttons which change
> what the mouse does. In the old search there are already mouse modes like
> 'Pan', 'Select', 'Filter' and 'Zoom'. We could make a 'Start search
> rectangle' mouse mode, where the user clicks a button, then clicks on the
> map, and a rectangle appears as he drags the mouse. This should be doable in
> both Marble and Google Maps.

I like the mouse modes. dragging selection rectangle will be nice too... 

We will use dragging selection rectangle for both Marble and Google Maps. 

>
> 1b) Obviously, users will try clicking on thumbnails. They would probably
> expect to then see the images belonging to the thumbnail in the album. There
> are two issues with this:
>
> 1b1) Currently, the map search albums are rectangular lat/lon areas. The
> grouped images, however, are not rectangular areas in some cases, because if
> there are some images left between two groups, they are given to one of the
> adjacent groups. So if a user clicks on a thumbnail indicating 100 images,
> depending on how we define the rectangle, he may get more or less images.

This depand of projection mode over the canvas, and the precision of
selection, due to zoom level. If yes, why not to introduce an average
of selected zone to query DB to limit error prone ?

The mainly error comes from the thumbnails size. For example, let's say we have some photos grouped as a thumbnail big as Paris and some photos very close to Paris. Also, let's say that we want to select all the photos from Paris. If we click that big thumbnail, it's a very big chance that the photos around Paris be also selected, because they have been "eaten" by the Paris thumbnail when we made it larger. To see how this process works, make the thumbnails from gpssearch smaller and bigger by clicking 'T+' or 'T-' buttons.
By using the selection rectangle we have more precision because we select the points where the query will be made. And this error precision is more accurate than the grouping selection.

>
> 1b2) If a user has clicked on one image, then clicks on another, do we only
> show images belonging to the new click? Or do we add some sort of way to do
> 'control+click' to add to the existing selection? To handle this, we will
> need multiple search areas at once and will have to extend the map search
> album code."

Do you confuse search geolocation tool on the left and geolocation
viewer on the right ?

No, there was no confusion. Here, Michael reffered to the case where selection would have been based on groups (click on thumbnails) instead of rectangles. Since we are all decided to use rectangles as selection, we don't have to worry about this.

>
> Taking in consideration his good analysis, I've thought that it should be
> better to keep the rectangle selection because it's more precise than the
> group selection. Another positive thing about rectangle selection would be
> the the small amount of actions to select photos(2 clicks and some mouse
> movement vs (number of groups) * clicks). Is this OK for you?
>
> Another thing would be:
>
> "2) Now let's say a user has made a selection, either using a rectangle or
> by clicking on a thumbnail. We then create a map search album from the
> coordinates. What should happen on the map? Do we hide all other markers
> outside of the selection? Or do we just gray them out?

gray ou sound like fine for me. How other similar search map tools
work in this case ?

>
> 3) Interaction with the images in the search range: Currently, you can
> easily filter the album view by clicking on a thumbnail. I find this quite
> useful,

me too.

>because you can quickly refine a search to have a look at some
> images, without having to do a new selection. So I would like to keep this
> possibility. Another thing we offer is selecting images on the map, and
> making this selection correspond to the selection in the album view. Not
> sure how much this is actually used.
>
> 4) If we hide the images outside the search range, we can make the points
> noted in 5) easier by removing the database based marker tiler from the
> kmap, and instead showing the images from the model displayed in the album
> view. If we get access to a selection model, many things are already solved.
> We then only have to implement filtering."
>
> I find hiding the selected markers/thumbnails outside selection the best and
> easy way to do it, as Michael said. It would be more faster(less
> transactions to database) and it's more intuitive for the user. Also, please
> let me know if you are OK with this.
>

no idea. i need to have a demo or better to see this feature in action
on my computer.

OK, I will announce you when I finish this part to proper test it and tell me what you think.


Gabriel

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