Am I the only one? Plant file rant

Thank you, kaperc! I had never noticed the envelope! (And if I had, I wouldn't have known what it was for, anyway...) You make complete sense.

Are you saying that if I find the streptocarpus in plant files once.............so that I can add pictures............i can save that link to have it to go back to?????????

Yep Gail ... when you are in PF at that plant, just click the little folder top right and it will add it to your favorites! Isn't that neat?!

Found the little yellow envelope on the screen by accident once. Didn't have a clue what it was before that. I expect to use it.

I will be using that feature a lot. One time i can find the category for Streptocarpus and then can't find my way back to upload a picture. We are really excited to find out about this feature.

When I have time, i am going to locate lots of files that I want to upload photos to...............being able to put it under favorites will save me hours and hours of time.

For finding things, when I don't know what blank it fits into, I copy the plant name -- usually the first one. If it were dracunculus vulgaris, I would paste "dracunculus" in the first blank without the quotes and search -- that would be common names. I would make sure it was spelled correctly, that's why the cut and paste.
If I didn't get anything, I would paste it in the next blank, that would be family. If that didn't work, then genus, etc. In this case I would get two choices for dracuculus and I would select vulgaris. From that I would learn that the name of the plant was genus first, species second, which turns out to be the way a great many plants are listed.
Normally only one word goes in a blank in the search form.

Ah Dave,
You are as fast as a speeding bullet! I love your new way of doing things. Now you give us just one blank and we past our plant into it. Here are my results. I pasted dracunculus vulgaris into the single blank and clicked search. dracunculus vulgaris came up first -- just what I was looking for -- then all the rest of the plants containing drucunculus in either genus or species, then 127 of plants that contain vulgaris in their names. For me that worked perfectly.
For others who can predict? They can go to the more selective search if they get more pages than they can deal with.
I will be interested to see how it turns out.

What you did is make it behave exactly like google. Most people can use google so most will find this excellent, I think.

This message was edited Oct 17, 2007 8:30 PM

I like it very much!

I even found my way around enough last night to upload a few photos..............because my pictures are everywhere...........it may be easier to find a picture first and then find the plant...................

Sounds like a lot of people like the new search engine!

Ya'll just tell me when the feature has been enhanced, please.

It has been enhanced. Try it! I think it will suit the average user better. The old plant files search page is available under advanced search.

When I get back home and caught up with plants, I want to just start going through all my pics from the beginning which would be last summer. (I didn't even have a camera prior to that time)

As I said, I think it is much faster now that i can use plant files easier to find a good pic of any plant and then find the plant file to upload the photo or add a plant.

it is much faster and easier!
thank you.


amy
*

I think the thing that took me the longest figuring out how to use plant files was realizing the "search plants" button upper right-hand corner was even there. I had only ever seen the "search for plants by name" and everything else listed under that. I used to get soooo frustrated searching until I discovered the little button at the top. Is there any way it could be closer to the other search functions? Or maybe in the paragraphs explaining how to use the files a little "to search general go here, to search specific go here?" The new search engine rocks, BTW.

Now that I've had a chance to test it out, I like it a lot!
x, C

I'm glad ya'll are liking the new search engine!

I find I use the new search form ( one blank) for some things and the old one for others. For names where I am not sure what is genus and what is species or what is Cultivar or what is a common name. I use the new search form. For Irises which usually come in a name/cultivar format and of which there seem to be millions, I use the common name and cultivar blanks of the pld form.

I am liking it so much, dave, that I figured out how to put in my FF toolbar!

x, C

I thought I was the only one who struggled with the elaborate form. I'm happy to have this simple entry. I'm actually using PF again.The inconsistent results and repeated attempts needed to get things entered to make PF happy made me give up on it a while ago.

One question, though-why do you have to go to separate links for each type of search? There's a lot of blank space below that lovely single line entry box and the link to the detailed search. I get that the search engines are different, but why not have both forms on one page?

I'm afraid that having both forms on one page will confuse some people.

Hmm, hadn't thought of that...:)