JungleDragon Alpha rev4 deployed!
August 27, 2010
This is to announce that JungleDragon Alpha revision 4 is now deployed on the staging environment. If you are a JungleDragon test user, please read the below carefully as it may require some small action on your behalf, for example clearing your cookies or refreshing your cache.
This release contains a few small usability improvements, but is mostly a technical improvement. Below are the changes:
Better thumb hovers
In the previous release, I improved the homepage by showing more images and less image metadata. The solution is to visualize metadata only when hovering a thumbnail. This has been improved further, below is an image without and with hover:
I plan to deploy this way of visualizing thumbs to the other image lists as well in a later release.
Image voting made more clear
In previous releases, the vote up button on the image page was not clear enough, as it only showed a small green vote block with an up icon. This call-to-action is now more emphasized by including the “Vote” text:
Pagination usability improvement
JungleDragon uses pagination for large lists, this works as on other sites, using page numbers that you can click through. The change that I now made only shows a big “More” link on the first page, since you pretty much always want to go to the next page from there. On all subsequent pages, normal number-based pagination is used.
Page rename
I was trying to be cute by calling JungleDragon terms and conditions the “Law of the Jungle”. It is now simply called “Terms and conditions” to avoid confusion.
Hierarchical tag browsing
JungleDragon supports a unique and innovative feature: hierarchical tags. It combines the best of free format tagging and a strict taxonomy of categories. However, the way this is visualized to users needs a lot of improvement, therefore I have temporary disabled the visual part. This part will be redesigned in a later release and then re-enabled.
404 fixed for comment voting
If you were not signed in and tried to vote up a comment, after signing in it would throw a 404. Fixed.
Configurable statistics tracking
I can now configure the Google tracking code for statistics per JungleDragon environment.
Session management drastically improved
JungleDragon uses the CodeIgniter Session setup to manage sessions. It works as follow: You get a client-side cookie that stores a unique session id, your IP and your user-agent. The cookie is encrypted and recycled every x seconds to avoid session theft. The actual session data is stored in a database table.
I had a lot of problems with duplicate entries in the session table. These problems are now fixed, if you are interested in the technical details, go here.
Important: As a result of this change, I had to clear all sessions in the database. If you had a persistent session, it is now lost. Please clear your cookies (or only the one for JungleDragon) and sign in again.
Avatar upload feature dropped!
Before, I gave you the option to use an avatar from gravatar.com or to upload an avatar image to JungleDragon. My avatar upload feature was of course not as good as the gravatar service and it does not make sense to spend a lot of development time on it. Therefore, I decided to drop the avatar upload feature. Your avatar will be picked up from Gravatar.com if you have an avatar configured there for the email address you use for JungleDragon. If you do not have it configured, you get the default avatar. If you uploaded an avatar to JungleDragon, sorry, but it is gone. Use the gravatar service instead.
Javascript improvements
Another technical improvement. I consolidated a lot of javascript libraries so that I make less HTTP requests now. They are loaded at the bottom now to further speed things up. Please clear your cache (shift+refresh) to get the latest javascript!
Concluding
The last 4 revisions have gradually improved JungleDragon based on test and concept feedback. Next week I will discuss how I plan to go from here. Stay tuned!
JungleDragon Alpha rev3: homepage redesign
August 27, 2010
JungleDragon Alpha revision 3 is deployed as of now at http://staging.jungledragon.com
Where revision 1 and 2 fixed and improved dozens of things reported by testers, this release does one thing only: it repurposes the homepage, the entry point of JungleDragon. Here is a somewhat outdated screenshot of the previous homepage:
Many of you recognize this style of homepage from sites like Digg.com, and the many sites that follow this popular pattern. It shows a stream of content on which users can vote. The content is described using a title, a truncated description and other metadata such as the submitter of the post. Finally, there is the possibility to directly vote on an entry.
I’ve come to realize that such a design does not make sense for a photo site like JungleDragon:
- It takes up a lot of vertical space, which means scrolling. This does not match the common audience of JungleDragon who just want to view photos.
- The extra metadata of a photo takes up a lot of space, much more than the actual thumbnail itself. Although the metadata can be interesting, it should not dominate the layout so much. Not on the homepage.
- Allowing for direct voting based on thumbnails allows for fairly superficial voting. It may increase the quantity of votes, but not the quality. If a user is lured into a thumb, I imagine they click on it to see the full size. From there, they can vote on it if they want to.
In an act of simplicity, the redesigned homepage now looks like this:
Much cleaner and simpler eh? A strong emphasis on the photos and much less scrolling. The top image is still large and then followed by a grid of images. The number of rows in the grid depend on your reputation. It starts with 5 rows and could grow to 11 rows based on your class in the food chain. Note thatthe screenshot still shows 3 rows.
The image metadata is not completely gone; upon hovering a thumbnail, a quick inline box shows basic information:
The new homepage: less nonsense, more photo viewing. Agree?
Watch it live at http://staging.jungledragon.com
JungleDragon Alpha rev2 deployed!
August 6, 2010
JungleDragon Alpha revision 2 is now deployed to the staging environment: http://staging.jungledragon.com
This release brings the following changes and fixes:
- When using the “View Sizes” option to view images in their large or original format, part of the image will be cropped when the image is larger than your browser window. This is now fixed.
- JungleDragon now also records and display the FocalLength EXIF parameter if available in your images. This change only works for images you upload as of now
- You now get extra karma for uploading an image that includes EXIF data
- You now get extra karma for uploading high resolution images. For each 1000 pixels on the dominant axis (depending on image orientation) you get 5 extra karma points. There is a maximum to this extra reward so there is no need to upload insane resolutions.
- Fixed a bug in the karma log: It was limited to show only the 200 most recent entries. Now it shows all of them, albeit paginated like before.
- On the homepage, all thumbs are now in a fixed width box that makes the layout more consistent when portrait and landscape images are mixed in one overview
- Typo in FAQ fixed, some other pages updated.
- Firefox now also shows shadows around specific images (such as the main image on the homepage)
- Before, when you had only a very small karma progress bar in the header, it was too small to trigger the tooltip that displays you karma score. This is now fixed, you can hover the entire bar for this tooltip, no matter at what % of the level you are.
- Some images showed “Edited 40 years ago”. This happens after editing the license of an image. This is now fixed. You may need to edit and save old images where this is still the case.
- Already fixed in Alpha rev 1 but now confirmed: There are images that do not have a tag yet do not appear in the “Untagged” overview. This too happens when the license of the image is edited. This was fixed in Alpha rev1 but you need to edit and save the old images to see the fix.
- Auto completion is now disabled for certain forms where this is insecure, for example the “Change email” form.
- I was using a hacky plugin to control the styling of the upload control but it has unwanted side effects. For example IE8 has a new security “feature” that shows “fakepath” in the upload control instead of the real path you selected. I decided to drop the styling hack. The upload control now uses the default rendering of your browser/OS combination. It is less consistent with the styling of the rest of the upload form but at least it is more robust.
- I have undone the change of Alpha rev1 where I stopped using tables for tag formatting on the “Tags” page. The tables are back. For the “picture” display mode of the Tags page I switched to 2 columns instead of 3. The image counters are slightly better too. In a next revision I will likely improve the Tags page even further.
Combined with the changes from Alpha revision 1, this solves the majority of the findings so far. Nevertheless, there are things left to do. On to developing Alpha revision 3!
Reminder
Remember, I always am looking for more testers, users and feedback. You can even win a 100$ prize! Here are a few important links:
- JungleDragon Alpha (test environment)
- FAQ (For those new to JungleDragon)
- About the test environment and test contest
- How to give test feedback
Help me out, I need you 
JungleDragon parking page updated
August 3, 2010
Whilst JungleDragon is not in production, there is a parking page at the production url (jungledragon.com). With the alpha released, this parking page needed to be updated. I decided to create a new, simple site from scratch:
Not much to see here, just a temp page. I will soon start on revision 2 of the alpha, there is still a lot of feedback to process. Nevertheless, keep it coming.
JungleDragon Alpha rev1 deployed!
August 2, 2010
It’s been 5 days since I launched JungleDragon Alpha. I just deployed revision 1, which contains a number of improvements and fixes. Before I discuss those, allow me to give a short status update:
- There are currently 10 registered testers. This passes the minimum of 5 needed for the contest (where you can win 100$) to be valid. I am happy with a test base of 10 for now, it actually exceeds my expectations. People do this voluntarily in their own time, I was not expecting a mass audience. Still, I am looking for much more testers so feel free to join us (http://staging.jungledragon.com)
- There are roughly 60 unique test findings so far. I agree with 70% and will fix those soon, 15% needs more discussion, 15% I disagree with or have a low priority. This proves that I am really listening to you.
- So far I have encountered no shocking revelations. There is a few bugs, usability ad styling problems, but no serious issues that break or undermine the application.
- There is a nice base set of content uploaded, roughly 200 images that are accurately tagged and described, a great starting point for other testers to work with. It it worth mentioning though, that most content was uploaded by one tester.
I find it always both scary and very exciting to see other people using something you build. It is a humbling, yet very educational experience. Although this test approach adds substantial work to my todo list, it is meaningful work that will improve the whole.
So far the update. Hereby the list of updates deployed as part of Alpha revision 1:
- The tags associated with an image were cleared when editing the license of the image. This is now fixed.
- A slight styling bug in the About section caused anchors to be underlined. Fixed.
- Favicon is improved and more consistent with JungleDragon branding.
- Options in the footer are now highlighted when selected.
- Social image editing is now enabled starting from the Bullet Ant class
- You no longer earn karma for editing your own images, as that encourages to not supply image details during upload.
- Time indication of content uploads was sometimes “one hour ago” and sometimes “1 hr ago”, this is now consistently “1 hr ago”
- Tag names are now propercased for the first word, lowercased for all words following
- Tag names are now truncated so that they do not break the layout when they are extremely lengthy
- On the tag page, the tags are now displayed after each other, not in a table. This fixes a lot of layout issues, although I am considering undoing this change. What do you think?
- Description of King Cobra made consistent with defense capabilities
- When you reach your treshold of image edits per hour or day you now see this upfront, not after trying to make an edit
- Styling issue: on lower resolutions, the top header image is intersected with vertical solid green bars. Fixed.
- There no longer is a restriction on the amount of image edits performed on your own images.
- FAQ page now has “back to top” links for easier navigation
- External links now open in a new window
- Naming of terms and conditions page is now consistent
- Redirect error when cancelling a sign in is fixed
- Content tree of About section is now complete, no more “hidden” pages
Thank you for your feedback so far and keep it coming. This revision fixes only a subset of the total list, so I will now proceed to implement the remaining changes into a set of additional revisions.
Update: I made a small deployment error that caused all images uploaded so far to be promoted to the homepage. This is now fixed. In case you were wondering what is going on in your karma log
JungleDragon alpha environment is live!
August 2, 2010
Dear friends, loyal readers and newcomers,
For quite a while I have been working on my pet project JungleDragon, a social image sharing community that focuses on nature and photography. Today, the very first public test version is launched and I need your help to test it. Everybody is invited, including your friends, coworkers and family. The best tester can win a cash price of 100$!
It does not matter whether you actively test or just peek around, all feedback is welcome. Please do consider the following important resources:
- staging.jungledragon.com (the permanent test location)
- About the test environment and contest
- How to give test feedback
- JungleDragon FAQ (gets you acquainted with the project and features)
- JungleDragon Facebook fanpage (where you go for feedback and discussions)
- JungleDragon blog (behind the scenes development updates)
If you are in my network, I may bother you via other ways as well.
Special thanks to Bas Peters for sponsoring and helping to setup the test environment, and of course many thanks to you in advance for helping out!
Enjoy. I need you.
JungleDragon is coming near you
August 2, 2010
For the past two years, my project JungleDragon has dominated this blog. I very much realize that although I have shared all progress that I made, I have failed to truly involve you all. This will change very soon.
Within a matter of days I will launch a public alpha test environment of JungleDragon. I will invite all of you to test it and give me feedback. I invite you to bring friends along as well, the more the merrier. I will even reward the best tester with a 100$ reward.
The alpha test environment will consist of what I call the JungleDragon core functionality. It is pretty much what you can expect from a social image community. Nevertheless, I want this base thoroughly tested before I move on to production code and more sophisticated features. The alpha environment is for testing only, its URL and data are temporary. I do intend to keep a permanent testing location open so that I can keep on getting your feedback. It is about time.
I’m currently in the middle of some unholy tasks such as cross browser testing and fixing, and writing help documentation. Next awaits the configuration and preloading of data. As I said, all should be ready within a few days.
I need you more than ever. When the alpha environment is ready, I hope you want to be involved in testing, whether it is 1 hour or 10. If you cannot find the time or interest, what about your friends?
Stay tuned…
JungleDragon reputation classes improved
June 28, 2010
JungleDragon has a sophisticated reputation system that works based on karma credits. The amount of karma credits you earn determines your class in the foodchain. A class, in turn, also give you an advantage over lesser classes:
- It determines your voting influence (Influence)
- It determines your defense against negative comments (Defense)
- It determines how much content you see on a single page (Sight)
In addition, some classes give you special abilities, such as:
- The ability to view images in their original size
- A larger upload quota
- The ability to edit image details of images uploaded by others (social image editing)
- The ability to edit tag metadata for special tags (social tag editing)
All of this is of course next to the visibility effect of a good reputation position in the community. Anyway, so far I have visualized such class abilities like this (partial screenshot highlighting the relevant area):
Fairly descriptive, but not attractive. My worry is that it will not be easily understood by end user. Hence, the following improvement:
There are now clear, color-coded progress bars to indicate the strenghts of each class, decorated with icons. Hovering one will explain what it means using a tooltip. Next to class strengths, class abilities are now clearly seperated and called “Powers”. The progress bars animate into their final position, which is a nice effect to see. I hope this visualization makes more sense to users, but only time will tell.
The above screenshot is taken from a dedicated screen that shows classes. However, a user’s class is visualized pretty much everywhere a user is mentioned, so I made the above visualization consistent. For example, here you can see how it is embedded on a user profile (click to enlarge):
The right sidebar shows the user’s reputation quite prominently. This will not only be a trigger to the current users, but also to other users viewing this profile to learn about the reputation system. While we’re at the user profile screenshot, there are two other visual changes I made:
- Notice the country flag on the top right. When a user fills out his country as part of his profile (optional), his country flag will show there. I currently support the flags of roughly 240 countries.
- The user profile holds quite a lot of content, divided into several tabs. As you can see, these tabs are now organized into sections of related options.
You like?
JungleDragon now supports Creative Commons
June 25, 2010
Ever since I started developing JungleDragon, I had some legal aspects in mind, particularly image licenses. You see, JungleDragon will be publicly hosting images posted by users and that means that copyright issues are inevitable. Up until now, I had a very simple implementation where users have to select the license that applies to the image they are uploading.
However, I noticed on other image sharing platforms that such a thing is never asked of users. The reason is quite simple. The legal consensus is that when you upload an image you own to a public website it is automatically copyrighted (all rights reserved). Other users need to ask permission to use that image outside of that website.
Therefore, I adjusted the upload form. The license selection field is gone and any image you upload is automatically marked as copyrighted. Note that this does not stop any user from downloading and distributing the actual image. It is technically not possible to do so. Besides, JungleDragon is a photo community, not a personal photo storage service.
With this change, common users that upload and view images are not “bothered” with the legal aspect of an image, which is great. However, it is still possible for an image owner to explicitly set the license of an image in a dedicated screen called Edit license:
When users find the default license (all rights reserved) not suitable, they can overrule it here. They can choose between All rights reserved, Some rights reserved (showing the different Creative Commons licenses) and No rights reserved (Public domain). Upon hovering each choice, a green tooltip appears explaining the license conditions. With the checkbox at the bottom, one can indicate that they want this license choice to apply to any future images that he or she uploads. There is an integration with the reward system too, the more open your license, the more karma points you get.
Once again, this license choice has no effect at all within JungleDragon. The license only indicates what you can do with the image outside of JungleDragon (redistribution). Whether you settle for the default or choose to overrule the license, JungleDragon will display the applicable license on image pages like so:
It displays the official names and logos of real-word licenses. Clicking through on this license gives you all the details. This set of changes brings a better usability, more control, and a better compliancy with copyright laws.
And then there is the legal aspect of what comes into JungleDragon. It is of course very much possible for a user to upload an image that he does not have permission for. For JungleDragon (me) it is pretty much impossible to find out whether that user owns that image or has a license for it. The recent YouTube versus Viacom trial showed that the legal consensus is that hosters have limited responsibility in such a matter, yet should offer a way for the rightful owners to take their content down. This has been implemented in JungleDragon already, it is called the Image report function:
The other legal requirement is obviously to respond in a timely manner to such reports.
All in all, I think these changes lead to a better legal compliancy and a better usability of JungleDragon. What do you think?
Tagonomy: Taxonomy meets folksonomy
June 12, 2010
For my JungleDragon project I was facing an enormous information architecture challenge. Starting out with a classic tagging model for content classification, I had strong desires to overcome some of the drawbacks of such a folksonomy:
- Tags have no/weak relationships with each other since they are just user-invented text labels. This means that it is not possible to use tags to position content in a hierarchical tree
- Tags have no meaning or rich context other than the label itself. If I tag something as “Africa” the system does not know that this is a continent. If it would know this it could for example display Africa on a globe.
- Due to the flexible nature of tagging, they introduce data quality problems: tags not used or not used correctly, misspellings, synonyms, etc.
I needed to bring the worlds of folksonomy and taxonomy together. To combine the strengths of both, whilst minimizing their cons. If this is not difficult enough already, I needed the added strength of a taxonomy structure to be loosely coupled to the community software (ImageDragon).
A challenge so it is. But I managed to do all of the above, and in this article I am explaining you how. Given the length of the article, I have published it as a PDF:
Download Tagonomy: Taxonomy meets Folksonomy
Solving this challenge and writing this article has been a lot of work. I hope you will find the interest and patience to absorb it. I am convinced that the solution beholds a lot of power as I will show you over time. For now, enjoy, and don’t forget to rate and comment back here. It keeps me going in writing more articles.
