[Design-team] Image Annotation App - more ideas

[Jef van Schendel]

2011/1/6 Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org>:
> Out of the process of using it Kirk pointed out some ideas for moving
> the app forward and I had a few ideas too, so I thought it might be
> worth breaking out another new thread on the annotation app.

Absolutely, bring it on. :)

> 3) It would be really nice if there was a way to etherpad-style enter in
> your name and have your comments color-coded and labeled as your
> comments. Right now Kirk and I have been leaving our name in parentheses
> after our comments.
>
> 4) Similarly it would be nice if comment blocks had timestamps.

These would indeed be very nice. However as Emily pointed out this
will require digging in the plugin. Possible, but not ideal.

I kind of like the fact that it only allows basic text, leaving anyone
free to add timestamps or names as they wish.

Of course something like a timeline or color coding would be awesome,
but I'd personally like to keep it basic for now.
>
> 5) It would be fantastic if there was a button you could hit, 'export
> comments' and it would give you a page that is a flat list of all
> comments, maybe numbered where each annotation box is a number. You
> could then use that as a checklist for working on a mockup.

This, I think, is very interesting. I wanted to create this website so
it could be used in combination with mailing lists, because as we all
know a text-only emails aren't the ideal medium for collaboration
between designers.

On the other hand, mailing lists still have some benefits. I think the
most important one here is that messages can be stored online (in the
archives) and locally (by subscribers). I'd like the website to keep
these advantages, which is why I was thinking about a way to export
the comments to the mailing list.

This way:

1) most of the information will be saved even if external services,
like the image annotation website or the image itself, are not
available anymore. It's always good to be able to look back on earlier
discussions and decisions.
2) it will be easier to reply to individual notes without crowding the images
3) as Mo said it can be helpful to have it all in a text format

I'll try to figure out something that works well for us. :)

> 6) Maybe adding the ability to title each note would make sense to help
> with idea #5, then it could print out a title for each set of comments.

Like #3/4, I don't want to add this too soon. But if we're going to
"export" the comments, they should definitely have a way to
identify/separate them. Even if we don't export them, we should be
able to point them out easily in a conversation.


I hope I'm not sounding very negative, these are all good ideas. I
just want to keep it light and reasonably generic for now and see how
that goes, without adding all kinds of specialized functions. :)

Jef