Changes to the 'Files

Please take a look at our new "look" for PlantFiles, BugFiles and BirdFiles, and test-drive our new (and very much improved) searches for these databases. Let us know what you think - if you run into any problems, please report them here. If you want to give an atta-boy or thumbs-up to the techs and graphics designers who worked hard on it, feel free to post that here, too :-).

Specific search is gone? Please say it's not so.

Sorry, This does not work at all for me. Very difficult to search.

Hmph. I've long been hoping our search engine would catch up with Google's. PF still can't correct if I type "Euonymous" instead of "Euonymus."

The weirdest thing is if I look up a plant, then copy and paste its name into the search bar, it can't find it again. That is, I can search "Burning Bush" or go to the specialized search and then search for "Euonymus alatus" and find all the varieties, however I can't click on the "Euonymus alatus" and have it take me back. Once you find the plant, you can click on the genus name but not on the species name.

Example, About 4 hours ago I was asked for recommendations on broccoli. I cannot remember details on every variety I have ever grown. no problem. I could always search broccoli specify only cultivars with photos and readily access every variety I have ever put in plantfiles. No way could I figure out the new format. Had to go to the Cornell site to retrieve the information. Lots of other features like newest entries, newest photos etc were useful but I can learn to live without them. Other format changes will take me some time to adapt, but is posible.

The following options need to be restored:

- Show entries with/without a cultivar. Why? It's useful to be able to search by genus to find a species and for some genera e.g. Solanum and Allium that is only practical if one can exclude cultivars (otherwise, the results include hundreds of cultivars of potatoes and onions, etc.)

- Show entries with/without pictures. Why? If you're trying to ID a plant by appearance a picture is needed. Entries without pictures are often not very helpful. This is especially true of genus/species where numerous cultivar entries have been added with no details or images.

[quote="TomH3787"]The following options need to be restored:

- Show entries with/without a cultivar. Why? It's useful to be able to search by genus to find a species and for some genera e.g. Solanum and Allium that is only practical if one can exclude cultivars (otherwise, the results include hundreds of cultivars of potatoes and onions, etc.)

I fully agree with this! I use that option extensively because I do not knowingly plant cultivars for my natives.

I know this is off topic, but don't see anywhere else to ask. What happened to my Custom Menu that I had in Column 2, Position 1? It isn't showing up now.

As for changes to Plantfiles, I agree with what's been said here and it is not an improvement. Sometimes you can't make things better than the original design if you still want to use it for what it was intended.

I posted a question a bit ago in this forum on the journal topic. Would be great if someone would address it.

I am now able to scroll through the images in PF, which is an improvement. For a while, it would tell me there were 67 images, but I could only see the first 6. I now have trouble with the screen jumping around a little as the images load. I can't, for example, leave my mouse on the right arrow to click quickly through the images, as the page scrolls up and down as each image loads, especially every time a new set of 6 images loads into the carousel below the large image. I still especially miss the ability to quickly look over all the thumbnails and click on the ones that interest me. If I am looking specifically for pictures of the seeds, for example, I don't want to have to scroll through 67 images of blossoms to see if there even ARE any seed pictures.

I like the ability to customize the search by color, soil requirements, zip code, etc.

One glitch I discovered: when you first do a search, you come up with a list of matches. At the top are two icons, one for list form, and one with 4 boxes to see the results in "tile" form. If you click on "tile form" icon, the search results disappear. If you click on "list form" icon, trying to get back to the original results, you still get no search results. You have to use the back button to get back to the original PF search page and start over.

I know people are resistant to change, but this does look much more polished, and more like what someone stumbling upon DG for the first time might expect from a website. Once the glitches are worked out, and some of the original features hopefully re-introduced, I think this will be a good thing.

I will let you know if I come across any other issues, but as of now, it is functioning much better than last week!

I tried searching for an entry every way I could think of and decided that it wasn't in the database. The only way I found it was to try to create it again, then it told me it already existed and gave me a link to it.

Using the specific search as it was before this update, I would have been able to find it in a few seconds.

This is the entry I was searching for. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/183466/

Here's what I got when I searched for it: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/search/results.php?gralcom=Berberis%20Golden%20Ruby

The search doesn't seem to be working for me. I get nine results but when I hit, see more, I go back to the main Guides and information page, not getting more results.

That time it worked in the advanced search, but it still doesn't bring it up in the initial search on the main PlantFile page.

I still had the tab open from the test 'Advanced Search' I tried yesterday (Berberis thunbergii Golden Ruby) so I used the browser back function to look at the search form. I'd copied/pasted into the form and somehow missed removing the space character before the cultivar name. The search then worked fine. Could they add a function to strip leading/trailing spaces when processing the form data? Having the 'Enter' key work again would be great. Thanks Terry! When I removed the cultivar name and tried the search again, I got 3 pages of results and was able to see all of them.

Terry I tried, 'Agave potatorum' on General search under Plantfiles (the box on left of screen where you can also put zip code in, which I left blank), came up no results. So I tried the right side where it says search Dave's gardens where the little orange and white magnify glass, that brought up a page of articles on agaves, and then a list of nine agave plants underneath, but none were my plant, that is where I hit more results under the list and it goes back to main page of Plant guides, instead of giving me more results.

So I tried advanced search putting in agave in genus and potatorum in species, still comes up no results.

The only way I could find my Agave potatorum, was to put just agave and then scroll through the results which don't seem to be in alphabetical order. So what I ended up doing was just putting in a search on the the right side and clicking under it just family of agave and that was in alpha order and I scrolled through five pages until I found it.

This is sure hard to explain, hope you understand.

Thanks Terry, I know these updates take time to work out the kinks. I do use Google and have Windows XP in case that matters any.

Okay, thanks to all your feedback, they are working on making the general search work more like it did in the past. Which may mean you get a lot of results that only contain one of the words in your search...but you should get results.

They are also working to strip out the extra/stray spaces between words and phrases. That should be a big help.

And they are working to have the search launch from the "enter" key as well as from the button/link. Again, a big efficiency gain.

They're having trouble replicating our problems with search results failing to load when we re-sort them or rearrange them. It seems to be a Mac/Safari and PC/Chrome issue. But I'm confident they'll get that fixed fairly quickly, too.

Another change/improvement that will be coming up ASAP is to allow you to limit your search results to entries with photos, and I think they'll also look at fine-tuning it to allow you to search for entries with/without cultivars, too.

Great, Terry!

This is an impressive thread, with good interaction between intelligent persistent users and co-operative Admin and staff. Kudos to participating users and staff.

ZM

When I went to plant guides a few days ago, in a rush, as usual,
I did a search using latin genus & species, and got NOTHING.

tried something else latin genus & species, nothing.

Gave up.

I later found this thread. Decided to try again.

Although the previos method was not perfect, this one is not perfect either.

When I did locate something in bug files or bird files, they are not in alphabetical
order. In plant files, many searches can only be completed by using the common
name but no clue about how to locate by latin nomenclature.

I hope the object is not to dumb down the whole thing.

I'm curious, how do most searches begin ? By name, photo, description when one doesnt know the name or other ?

An example of frustration. I needed to upload new photos of the pepper Aladdin. I tried general search. advanced search, even finally found the pull down menu under "more plants" went through 25 pages by reviews, went through about 10 pages by cultivar nothing. I knew the cultivar was in there somewhere because I entered it long ago. After a half hour I was able to find it but if i had not known it was there I would have abandoned the search long before wasteing that time. Unless there there is a whole new set of logic patterns in todays mobile device users, plantfiles has become quite illogical. Nothing seems to have any rhyme or reason.

The general search has been tweaked as of just a few minutes ago. Let us know if it behaves as expected when you use it. (We still need to get the launch from hitting "enter" or "return" key working, but as far as the search results, it seems to work pretty well from what I've tested.)

I really dislike the new Plant Files search engine. It's TERRIBLE!! Is there a way to get the old one back that was actually useful and useable?

For example: I type in Daylily 'San Antonio Firecracker' and get "no search results found". I know it's in PF because I've added pics to the database in the past. It's not very common name user friendly.

It's better, and when the results are alphabetical it will be even better.