Make next / previous universally non-confusing (possibly with thumbs?)

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Right now we have next/previous buttons like: []

The problem: it's confusing. I made a suggestion on how to fix this
once, by reversing the order of the arrows:
`http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/423 <http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/423>`_

However I'm not sure this really makes things clearer. Either
ordering is confusing here:


-  [] is what we used to do but this is confusing because our
   galleries go in the opposite direction (newer on left, older on
   right), which is what makes sense for a gallery to be like.
-  [] is what we do now, but that's also totally confusing. Who
   really expects arrows to point this way? Not me (even despite
   filing that old ticket). Imagine reading a webcomic ordered this
   way. That would be crazy! So here's some suggested resolutions:
-  Switch back to the old behavior and add text to the arrows, like
   []
-  Add smaller-thumbnail support (75-100px?) and make these
   thumbnails the navigation.

I'd opt for `#1 </issues/1>`_... maybe we can make #2 a different
ticket and add an ajaxy "quick browser" like flickr has that's
scrollable left and right, and make that **separate** from the
current next/previous arrow buttons. Bonus point: doing
`#1 </issues/1>`_ will fill up some of that glaring whitespace on
those current buttons ;)

Dropping this in Jef's lap! Jef, what do you think?

[Jef van Schendel]

Heh, I've got a feeling we've been flipflopping on this a couple of
times now.

Anyhow, here's something else to think about... Right now, the
next/previous buttons link to next and previous images by **that**
user. But say you're on a page that lists all the images with the
tag "new". You click on one, and then start browsing by clicking
next, next, next. I think one would expect to only see the images
from that tag page, not all the images by that user.

The same problem would occur with, say, searches. Though that's
still far away.

A few notes:


-  GMail solves this by making the next and previous buttons
   search-dependent. So if you just searched for emails from Jessica
   and open one, the navigation buttons will browse only through the
   other results from that search. I assume this is... pretty
   difficult to do, but what do I know?
-  Another way can be seen at for instance Dribbble (and to a
   lesser extent Flickr, too). If you go to the front page, you'll see
   the most popular images. Click one of these, and the right sidebar
   will have **two** navigation areas. One is labeled "MORE from
   POPULAR" and browses through the other popular images you just saw.
   The one below that says "MORE by [user]" and browses through the
   rest of the user's submissions.

For now, we can at least at labels to the buttons, I think. That's
easy enough to do and will make it a lot clearer.

Interestingly, GMail also used to do this (with "newer" and "older"
labels) but they've since thrown that out during the Google
redesign.

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Very true, and one way to handle making the next / previous buttons
less confusing in that circumstance is to do something like:


-  /u/cwebber/m/swimmin-with-the-fishes?in\_global\_tags=fishes
-  /u/cwebber/m/swimmin-with-the-fishes?in\_user\_tags=fishes
-  /u/cwebber/m/swimmin-with-the-fishes?in\_collection=fishy\_fishy\_fish

and use that context to figure out what group of things this is in
so that the prev / next buttons are setup correctly.

[Jef van Schendel]

43.png

[Jef van Schendel]

As of now, I've changed it to use suggestion `#1 </issues/1>`_ from
the ticket ("Switch back to the old behavior and add text to the
arrows").

Here's a small screenshot.

[maiki interi]

Christopher Webber wrote:

    Very true, and one way to handle making the next / previous buttons
    less confusing in that circumstance is to do something like:

    
    -  /u/cwebber/m/swimmin-with-the-fishes?in\_global\_tags=fishes
    -  /u/cwebber/m/swimmin-with-the-fishes?in\_user\_tags=fishes
    -  /u/cwebber/m/swimmin-with-the-fishes?in\_collection=fishy\_fishy\_fish

    and use that context to figure out what group of things this is in
    so that the prev / next buttons are setup correctly.


If there is another way to create media context streams, I would
prefer it. For completely selfish reasons, I am a big fan of sane
URLs, and I copy and paste links all day long.

An idea would be to provide smart default contexts (if coming from
a tag page, then load "all" and "tag" contexts, whereas coming from
a user page loads "user" and "collection" [when we get those
^\_~]).

I am not sure on how to go about it, but we should ping the general
populace on this.

[Caleb Davis]

Way to go, Jef! The new buttons look great. BTW, GMG looks really
beautiful in general.

[Jef van Schendel]

Closing this ticket.

I think we definitely need to look at what Chris and maiki were
talking about above, but that should be a new ticket. To at least
have *some* clarity, I've added "? Browsing media by [uploader]"
above the navigation buttons.

And thanks, Caleb! :)

[Will Kahn-Greene]

The original url for this bug was ​http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/504 .