On May 5, 5:13*pm, Sean Straw wrote:
On Sat, 5 May 2012 09:19:07 -0700 (PDT), "Eric, just a guy"
wrote:
There are now two free Android phone apps, one for flower
identification,http://goo.gl/lkOZf, and one for tree identification,
http://goo.gl/t5WyY(also one for birds,http://bit.ly/floweridapp).
They're tiny apps, based on my (fairly popular) ID programs on the
web, e.g.:http://www.realtimerendering.com/flowers/flowers.html.
It strikes me that the Q&A stuff on your site might be improved upon:
* * * * * use AJAX to incrementally build the query (rather than
presenting one large mess of questions at a time). *You could grey out
options which don't apply based on answers given to other questions.
* * * * When in bloom: add "NOW" and use the present date. *Chances
are, if someone is trying to identify something they're looking at, it
may be currently in bloom.
* * * * Whether or not it is known that the plant has roots or a bulb.
* * * * sizes could be expressed in metric as well.
Also note that the diagram links for "Leaf veins", "Leaf edges", and
"Leaf Petiole" all come up with a forbidden on the other site you're
linking to.
Excellent feedback - I appreciate them (it's hard to get honest and
detailed criticism). Unfortunately, while I'm good at Perl and some
other languages, AJAX is not among them. My lame excuse is that the
advantage of keeping it all server-side is that the page is then
usable everywhere, even if you have a crummy phone with lousy web
connectivity. Still, I'm hoping to learn Javascript this summer, so
maybe it might be able to come into play.
The diagrams being "forbidden" is quite odd - they work fine from my
location. I'll have to think how to solve that one - probably need to
search out Creative Commons images.
Roots & bulb would involve Real Work, of adding additional
characteristics for all plants in the database, but I'll think about
it. My rationalization for the day: since they're wildflowers being
identified, I almost don't want to encourage anyone digging them up.
Date's a nice idea, but hard to do with a static web page tied to
Perl. For the Android app version, I'll definitely suggest these ideas
- the "automatically update and also gray out options" is one I've
wanted to see in a "real" program, unlike my static page.
Thanks again,
Eric