Please put morphological characters into the Advanced key fi

[Terry]

Well I finally bought the BB app, and have had a chance to look at it first hand. It is good for its current early stage of development. There are some aspects where improvements could be made, in my opinion.

*Please put morphological characters into the Advanced key filter*

I would really LOVE to have morphological characters used in the filter, as I indicated in another posting in a desired function Forum entry. In fact, it would be ideal if we could choose which characters were to be used in the filter page (so perhaps someone could turn "off" a category, such as "Exposure" or "Fall Color", if they weren't desired. To me this is the singular most important improvement needed for the BotanyBuddy app. (I know the species list will be increased to have more of the eastern flora represented, so I won't comment on that here.)

I find it frustrating have to narrow the database down using subjective terms like form, growth habit, exposure, bloom time, fall color and height/width. It is much quicker to go off of features such as opposite/alternate leaves, simple vs. compound leaves, dentate or entire (or variations) leaves, hairy or not. I don't think I am alone in this point of view.

Also it would be nice to know dynamically how many species are left after applying each filter (as opposed to having to hit the Search button). Some iPhone apps (e.g. Fungi,or iBird) do this, and it provides useful feedback so you know when the number of species is low enough to just to start looking through the options. Then when seeing the results of a search, it would be nice to know how many species are included in the list of "hits".

Someone else commented that having the app remember whether a person prefers the Quick or Advanced search would be welcome. I look forward to seeing that in an update, as you indicated it would show up.

I also echo the comment made by Anders that more "real estate" would be welcome in the search window.

Thanks a lot!

Terry

[chopper]

Thanks again for the input. It is definitely our intention to put the morphological features into the advanced search. I think we have mentioned somewhere else on here before that we will be incorporating profiles into the next version of the app as well (after the library additions). This will definitely happen on the web version from day one. The idea here is to be able to hide or retrieve what ever pages or filters you want use and personalize the app to your own use. You would also be able to hide or rearrange pages so you can start right into the search screen and skip the opening pages if you wish.

The only thing that I saw in your post we don't already have in the works is the "results ticker" and that would be very handy. Along this same line, regarding the flow of the search. We will also be setting it up so you don't have to go in and out of the filters and can go from one right to the next. This will be really handy for those who are customizing their filters and know right where they want to go.

Thanks again, and I'll look into the ticker.

Charlie