JungleDragon tags: one page to rule them all »
FERDY CHRISTANT - MAY 19, 2009 (06:43:46 PM)
Lately, I promised to show you more of JungleDragon, my massive pet project. This time I'll be going into the JungleDragon tag screen. I know I keep whining about tags, but it is important. It is the primary way to classify and find content in JungleDragon. So, without further delay, have a look at the tag browse/search screen:
I know it's hard to see, but I have to surround JungleDragon with a bit of mystery. The screen you're looking at beholds a lot of power:
- Users can browse through the list of tags manually (using pagination).
- They can do this using different sortings (see tabs): popular tags or alphabetical tags.
- Tags are displayed in 4 columns (max), making this an effective use of screen real estate that minimizes scrolling. Each tag is preceeded with a number indicating the number of images in it.
- The search box is actually a type-ahead box. As you type in it, the 4 column result table below will display the tags that match the search term.
- The right column shows basic tag help and a list of tags that the user has favorited. Favoriting a tag I consider innovative in some way, since not many applications have this. In fact, I don't know any application that has it. You could see it as a live favorite, one that constantly updates.
Browse, search, sort and favorites in a single screen without scrolling. I like it. In all fairness, it was heavily inspired by StackOverflow. I'm not usually the guy to steal of somebody else's work, but I consider their design for tag browsing/searching a new best practice that I'm very willing to adapt. Plus, my implementation is slightly different in terms of visualization, components (I'm using TagDragon for this), and I have supplemented the idea with help and a list of tag favorites.
What do you think?

