Neil,
This is a hard problem that few data browsing interface designs have
solved. As far as I know, commercial software vendors who build faceted
browsing solutions have only started recently to approach this problem.
Here is the experimental solution that I've alluded to previously. Point
your Firefox at
http://people.csail.mit.edu/dfhuynh/projects/nfb/
and click "Publications." Keep in mind that this "nested faceted
browser" predates Exhibit, so it is less finessed and more confusing.
=====
- Here you're looking at 20 papers, with 2 facets on the right.
- Where this nested faceted browser departs from Exhibit is in the first
facet: note that "36 People" is a link. Click on "36 People", and now
you are looking at the 36 authors (of those 20 papers). Note that the
facets on the right have changed.
- Note the blue band at the top which shows the path you have taken
(going from 20 papers over to 36 people). Click on the first
rounded-cornered rectangle labeled "20 Papers". You should now be
looking at those 20 papers again, with 2 facets on the right.
- Select "research" in the "track" facet. The current collection is
filtered from 20 papers down to 16 papers. Look at the blue band at the
top: the second rounded-cornered rectangle now shows "29 People" (as
opposed to "36 People" previously). Thus, by filtering the papers you
have also affected the interconnected collection of authors.
- Click on the rounded-cornered rectangle labeled "29 People" to see
those authors.
- In the third facet, click on "12 Schools" to see the schools where
these authors teach.
- In the first facet, click on "8 Countries"... And so forth.
- You can filter any of these collections along the way, and switch back
and forth between them. Note that your filtering on a collection only
affects the collections to the right (on the blue band at the top).
=====
- Another way to explore the data is through the "group by" feature.
- In the blue band at the top, click on the first scissors icon to
discard all the browsing you've done and get back to the collection of
papers. De-select any facet you have selected.
- At the bottom of the first facet, click on "group by". You get a
little popup to the left of the facet.
- Select "schools they teach at" in that popup. Note that the authors in
the facet are now grouped by their schools.
- In the popup, select "countries". Note that in the facet, the schools
are now grouped by countries.
- In the popup, select "continent". The countries are now grouped by
continents.
- Now, in the facet, select "Asia". The page should now show the 8
papers written by people who teach at schools located in countries in Asia.
This "nested faceted browser" is designed to make compromise between
expressiveness of queries and ease of use. That is, it cannot express
all possible SQL queries, but hopefully it's easier to use than a text
box where you are to enter a SQL query. Still, in its generic form, I
believe it is still a bit too powerful for most users. Moreover, the
blue band at the top, which displays the collection-to-collection
browsing history, is hard to integrate visually into any arbitrary web
page. If you have any idea how (even just for your particular case), I'm
all ears!
Cheers,
David
Neil Ireson wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> My apologies for speaking too soon, whilst the approach below removed
> some of the issues I had with linked collections, it also introduced
> others. It seems I cannot get passed the half a solution.
>
> Basically what I'm trying to do is make any changes to the facets
> associated with the artist or artwork collections effect both the
> facets and views associated with the artist and artwork collections.
>
> I think what I'm after is interlinked collections, e.g.
>
> <div ex:role="collection"
> ex:itemTypes="Artwork"
> ex:baseCollectionID="artist-collection"
> ex:expression=".artwork"
> id="artwork-collection"></div>
> <div ex:role="collection"
> ex:itemTypes="Artist"
> ex:baseCollectionID="artwork-collection"
> ex:expression=".artist"
> id="artist-collection"></div>
>
> Currently this is not possible as all the collections must first be
> created and then initialised with the baseCollections; which does not
> seem to be too hard to implement. It is also necessary to stop the
> infinite recursion of changes, which for me is proving somewhat more
> troublesome.
>
> Just wondering if this makes sense to those developers with a clearer
> view of the code than I.
>
> N
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Connected Collections (cool feature)
> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:09:43 +0000
>
> Hi David (and all),
>
> I know you said that the current implementation which connects the
> collections was only half a solution, generally things work fine,
> however in using it I have come across two issues.
>
> 1) The count in the facets relate to the base Collection when this
> is not always the most appropriate.
> 2) For Text Search there is no way to use the approach as you only
> directly specify a collection.
>
> However in messing about I noticed that it is possible to over
> come these issues, by linking each collection to the other. For
> example
>
> <div ex:role="collection" ex:itemTypes="Artwork"
> id="base-collection"></div>
> <div ex:role="collection" ex:baseCollectionID="base-collection"
> ex:expression=".artist" id="artist-collection"></div>
> <div ex:role="collection" ex:baseCollectionID="artist-collection"
> ex:expression=".artworks" id="artwork-collection"></div>
>
> N
>
>
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