The new Thumbnail thingy in Cat-elog

grokefish · Post by **grokefish** » 18 Jun 2007, 08:09

I've just discovered the thumbnail thingy that comes up when you leave the cursor on the species name when searching for fish in the cat-elog.
This is the best thing since sliced bread, really.
Three cheers for whoever put it on (Jools?)
Planet catfish really is the best website on the whole internet.

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 18 Jun 2007, 11:05

That's definitely Jools' work.

And it's nice, isn't it!

--
Mats

Chrysichthys · Post by **Chrysichthys** » 18 Jun 2007, 15:27

It's especially fun to go through your My Cats list and see them all pop up.

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 20 Jun 2007, 14:56

I like the photo pop-ups, too. The Fishbase-like search is a very nice touch!

Amanda

snowball · Post by **snowball** » 21 Jun 2007, 12:32

It brings the thumbnail up on any clog link, awesome stuff jools! , ,

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 24 Jun 2007, 14:53

Thanks guys, I'm quietly very happy with it myself. It's also quite good on the server as it only loads images if you point at something.

As an additional feature, genus only clog tags, i.e. should also work.

The enhancement also emails me if an image is broken too, so I've been spending quite some editing peoples posts where they have misspelled something in a

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 24 Jun 2007, 14:54

Chrysichthys wrote:It's especially fun to go through your My Cats list and see them all pop up.

Yeah, I laughed aloud when I got that working for the first time.

Jools

snowball · Post by **snowball** » 25 Jun 2007, 02:06

Is there any chance it could be made to work with straight L numbers etc.?

ie , without having to add the genus prefix as per

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 25 Jun 2007, 09:57

Probably, yes, actually all it means is that you could use any common names, so it would work for C001, Zebra Pleco and so on.

However you'd need to write L047 as opposed to L47. That said, and call me a science snob if you wish, but isn't it good to use them and not rely on common names?

Jools

Bas Pels · Post by **Bas Pels** » 25 Jun 2007, 11:13

it's not snobbish, contrarily.

Communication means getting understood, and common names are mostly (zebra pleco is one of the best examples of an acception) local

This forum is used world wide, hence the urge to use latin names (I just say, commonnames are most popular with USA citizens, I hardly see them used by others)

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 25 Jun 2007, 12:08

Whilst I fully agree with Bas and Jools, there is one advantage with the "Common Name Cat-eLog" search feature: If you have a link to <some>, then you can click it to find out what it is. If all you have is <some>, we have to search the common name table.

--
Mats

snowball · Post by **snowball** » 25 Jun 2007, 15:39

I agree that the use of unofficial monikers is not something that should be encouraged, but, that said, they have become entrenched in the hobby and I suspect they will be used by many for some time.

Perhaps the forum's word censor could replace L no.s etc with real names when they are known - although I suspect there would be too many for it to cope with ;)

I only ask because I have little idea what any of the L numbers are and can rarely be bothered to look them up, so it would be nice and easy to simply move the cursor over to get an idea of what they look like.

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 25 Jun 2007, 17:35

I'm not sure how many people would actually use the clog tag for common names. I mean, if they don't use the sci name, why would they bother to use tags?

snowball wrote:Perhaps the forum's word censor could replace L no.s etc with real names when they are known - although I suspect there would be too many for it to cope with ;)

That might work, however it would require nearly 700 entries (L400,C150,LDA100,CW030) getting them in there wouldn't be too difficult, but maintaining them is a little bit of a chore. My main fear is that every post has to be checked (albeit only once) for 700 odd word matches and that might slow down the posting process. However, it would automatically put tags in...

Jools

pleco_breeder · Post by **pleco_breeder** » 25 Jun 2007, 18:08

Hello,

Not to interfere with the mod conversation on this, but wouldn't this be smoother, regarding the use of L numbers, if it scanned for the use of clog tags. In that way, L #'s could be used for ID questions if wanted or leave the pic from general discussions that would simply pop-up the same tag repetitively for the discussions regarding 1-2 species. At the same time, #'s seem to make up a large part of this hobby, and not all fish are readily identified to a genus yet.

I have to say I'm impressed with the upgrade, but it doesn't make sense to use that much bandwidth for most of the general discussions. ID questions on the other hand work out very cool with this feature. Somebody asks what species they have, and provided it has a name, they get an instant pic of the fish to verify. Now, if a way could only be devised to insure they read the catelog info of their fish

Just a couple thoughts on the matter,

Larry Vires

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 25 Jun 2007, 20:12

pleco_breeder wrote:Not to interfere with the mod conversation on this,

It ain't limited to a mod discussion, that's why it posted here. Open for everyone's input - you're contributing not interfering.

pleco_breeder wrote:, but wouldn't this be smoother, regarding the use of L numbers, if it scanned for the use of clog tags. In that way, L #'s could be used for ID questions if wanted or leave the pic from general discussions that would simply pop-up the same tag repetitively for the discussions regarding 1-2 species. At the same time, #'s seem to make up a large part of this hobby, and not all fish are readily identified to a genus yet.

Doesn't matter about generic placement, all catelog species can be accessed with a clog tag. for example. I agree about the fact that they make up a fair bit of discussion, but do you think we really would see a distinct increase in usage if it was expanded?

pleco_breeder wrote:I have to say I'm impressed with the upgrade, but it doesn't make sense to use that much bandwidth for most of the general discussions. ID questions on the other hand work out very cool with this feature. Somebody asks what species they have, and provided it has a name, they get an instant pic of the fish to verify. Now, if a way could only be devised to insure they read the catelog info of their fish

It doesn't affect bandwidth, only CPU which we have a fair bit to spare on. That's a techie point though.

One of the things we can do is put basic info under the pic, like size, temp, pH etc. I had thought of that already as I've also been playing with allowing ANY site to use the feature (linked back to Planet). Thats not for today though.

Jools

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 25 Jun 2007, 20:18

Test: L009 - well, that doesn't work. The forum does the word replacement AFTER the tag interpretations.

I will look into how much work a new tag might be...

Jools

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 25 Jun 2007, 20:36

OK, two things:

a) A new tag like [ cname ] or similar would take about 4-5 hours work.

b) Getting the [ clog ] tag to work with common names would be about another 1.5 hour or so - 6 hours total. It would actually be easier to do this for all common names, rather than limit it to l-numbers. End result is the same if you are only interested in l-numbers.

I also have two other largish projects in the pipeline (adding subfamilies and the google maps API) and I think I'd like to progress these first.

So, I don't have that kind of time (in one go) right now and probably won't for a week or three. Maybe someone can bump this topic in a while?

Jools