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Flickr image import suggestions
After digging into file-based imports for a couple of days, thought I'd turn my attention to the Flickr-based side of the image import dialog. Hadn't explored it before, and was happy to see that it's based on Flickr's search API, so you can enter a couple of keywords and get a raft of (mostly) appropriate images. The more I played with it, the more potential it showed for prototypes, proofs-of-concept, etc. But a couple of issues cropped up:
1. Delimiters: You get wildly different results for "halloween,pumpkin" and "halloween pumpkin" -- the former yields 30 photos, while the latter brings only one. Might want to add a note about delimiter syntax, to remove guesswork and unhappy surprises.
2. Full-text versus tags-only search: the Flickr API supports either, but there's no choice in the import dialog, and no indication which variant is being used. There's a huge difference in full-text and tags-only searches, and I've always found the tags to be more useful. Would be good to have a choice, along with a most relevant/recent/interesting radio control set. Just a matter of tapping their API.
3. Grayscale option: Most Flickr photos are in vivid color, while Mockups is -- by its nature, and appropriately -- a mostly monochromatic tool. This means that imported Flickr images wind up looking out of place, even if the image is perfect for the mockup. All that color can be downright distracting. Since Flex/Flash is pretty capable with image manipulation, could we have a checkbox to render the imported image in grayscale? That would instantly blend it in better with the rest of the mockup.
4. Keeping images in memory: I sent a note about this regarding file-based images, then said it didn't matter when I brought up Mockups on on faster, fatter pipes. Now it matters again, and the speed of the local connection is not a help: Whenever you tab away from a mockup that has a Flickr-based imported photo, the image is dumped from memory. Switching back to that tab results in a long delay as Flickr is re-contacted, re-queried, and the image is re-transmitted and re-loaded. It's reasonable to go through this when loading a BMML file from disk, and it needs to call Flickr for the images, but it's a bit more annoying to go through it when you just happened to change tabs and return.
1. Delimiters: You get wildly different results for "halloween,pumpkin" and "halloween pumpkin" -- the former yields 30 photos, while the latter brings only one. Might want to add a note about delimiter syntax, to remove guesswork and unhappy surprises.
2. Full-text versus tags-only search: the Flickr API supports either, but there's no choice in the import dialog, and no indication which variant is being used. There's a huge difference in full-text and tags-only searches, and I've always found the tags to be more useful. Would be good to have a choice, along with a most relevant/recent/interesting radio control set. Just a matter of tapping their API.
3. Grayscale option: Most Flickr photos are in vivid color, while Mockups is -- by its nature, and appropriately -- a mostly monochromatic tool. This means that imported Flickr images wind up looking out of place, even if the image is perfect for the mockup. All that color can be downright distracting. Since Flex/Flash is pretty capable with image manipulation, could we have a checkbox to render the imported image in grayscale? That would instantly blend it in better with the rest of the mockup.
4. Keeping images in memory: I sent a note about this regarding file-based images, then said it didn't matter when I brought up Mockups on on faster, fatter pipes. Now it matters again, and the speed of the local connection is not a help: Whenever you tab away from a mockup that has a Flickr-based imported photo, the image is dumped from memory. Switching back to that tab results in a long delay as Flickr is re-contacted, re-queried, and the image is re-transmitted and re-loaded. It's reasonable to go through this when loading a BMML file from disk, and it needs to call Flickr for the images, but it's a bit more annoying to go through it when you just happened to change tabs and return.
I’m already thinking of groovy new uses for this.
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Inappropriate?Michael, thanks for the detailed feedback as always. For 1 and 2, could you recommend a set of settings that would in your opinion yield the best results? For instance, if someone typed "a b" I could automatically insert commas in between before doing the search. In other words, I would like to provide users with LESS choices, just a default that works for 90% of the time.
3. Ha! I have something even better planned for it, but I won't say for now, it's a surprise! :)
4. You're right, it's a pain. It will be a big pain to fix it, but I have some ideas. I think I'll save this optimization for a small release after 1.5 ships, if that's ok with you.
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This is one of the best points
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Funny thing is, if you go to Flick and enter a search for halloween[space]pumpkin and halloween[,]pumpkin, the result set is exactly the same. Not sure why that difference matters in the Mockups import dialog, but the outcome should definitely be an "and" operation between the keywords: halloween AND pumpkin. As far as the other query settings, my own preference for fixed values would be tag matching and ordered by most interesting (interestingness). That would cover my needs 90+% of the time. -
Inappropriate?Ok, now the label says "Tags:" instead of "Keywords:", I add commas between them if you don't, search ALL of them and return 51 images sorted by decreasing interestingness...it's really nice.
I’m wondering how I'd be able to manage without my awesome customers friends
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Inappropriate?Sweeeeet! This actually immediately useful, since one of my projects includes a catalog selection screen that's intended to show thumbnails of listed items. I'd been dropping in image placeholders, but now I can call up a series of tag-appropriate images instead. It's also nice that shift-dragging maintains aspect ratio on resize, while "Auto-Size" snaps things back to the original dimensions.
Also, is it just that Flickr is more responsive today, or have you done something to speedup redisplay when switching between tabs? The lag is less noticeable right now.
One last idea for something to add: an optional border around the imported image, same as offered by the Canvas and List components. Depending on the image and the surrounding context, that can be a big help.
I’m wasting all sorts of time browsing images.
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