Please test the new Search page and Image Viewer!

Salvatore IoveneHendrixelMichael RingJeffrey HorneMarco Prelini
• AstroBin Beta Testers •99 replies•916 views
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Dear members of the AstroBin Beta Testers group,

I hope you all had a great summer! I was super busy with cooking new amazing stuff for you! 

I worked on improving the search page and I would kindly ask that you have a test drive before I deploy it to the live servers, so you can let me know if there are any bugs or I missed something.




The goals were:
  • Improving the ease of use (finding filters, understanding what you are searching for, navigating images)
  • Speed of interacting with the items on the page
  • Improving the way the information is presented so you can find it more easily
  • Optimizing display all the way from mobile phones to very large screens
  • Adding some search functionality




You can now use quotation marks for exact searches, and the minus signs for exclusions! In the screenshot above, you're searching for all images that feature the word "andromeda" but not the word "zwo".



For many filters, including telescope types, camera types, celestial subjects, and more, you can specify multiple items and decide if you want to match ALL of them or ANY of them. In the screenshot above you're searching for all images acquired with a newton or an apochromatic refractor, and a film camera. And you can autocomplete a lot of things, which help you find better matches!



You can now save your searches with a name, and recall them later with just a couple of clicks. In the screenshot above I'm about to save a search for all images of M 31 by astrophotographers from Italy.



It's easier to see all your active filters because they are shown in a compact form just below the address bar. In the screenshot above I'm searching for all images acquired in the month of August of this decade, in the constellation of Orion, from a backyard, an using a narrowband filter.



Search results have infinite scrolling now instead of numbered pagination, so it's faster to continue looking at amazing images.



Images open in a brand new full size viewer with lots of improvement compared to the view you've used to. Let me try and list the most notable!
  • The view takes the entire available space, and is optimized both for very large screens and small mobile devices.
  • The image is in a fixed position so you can scroll the information without losing sight of the most important feature.
  • All the information has been organized in a way that is readable, compact, and sensible.
  • Complex information that might difficult to read for images with lots of acquisition dates and filters, have been organized in a clever way so that you only see the information you care about, and can click-thru to see more if you want.
  • You can close this view by clicking on the X button or hitting Escape on your keyboard, and you are back to your search results in the same scroll position.
  • You can use the left/right buttons (or left/right arrows on your keyboard) to navigate all search results, including those in pages that haven't been loaded yet.




You can enjoy browsing related images with infinite scrolling, and explore the 1,000,000+ AstroBin images and videos!



I know you want to pixel-peep, you know you want to pixel-peep, so go ahead and do it! With the new Zoom Lens you can see sunspots on Proxima Centauri!


Alright, are you still with me? If you want to test, please go here:

https://beta-app.astrobin.com/search

This is connected to the real AstroBin database, so if you like/bookmark/comment images, it's real.

Please let me know if you find any bugs or want to provide any feedback!

Hope you like this!
Salvatore
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Steeve Body avatar
Steeve Body avatar
This looks amazing mate! I’ll have a good test and report back
petelaa avatar
petelaa avatar
Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!
I’m usually browsing the search page casually, just randomly clicking on images I like. I’m (almost) always on iPad (Safari).
One of the features that’s a great improvement for me is the stability of the annotated image.
clicking once now gives me the annotated image, clicking a second time gives me the full image. This was very buggy in the old viewer. Sometimes it worked, but most of the times single click gave a fraction of a second’s view of the annotated image, and then progressed instantly into the full image.
However, the annotated image seems to be only available if the image was solved using PixInsight, correct? For older images I can’t seem to find the annotated view, even thought they are solved (I can get the sky map).

What are the requirements for “related images”? It’s become more difficult to find images in the same area now, I think. You’d have to go into the dec/ra filters yourself now?
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
However, the annotated image seems to be only available if the image was solved using PixInsight, correct?

Ah, thanks for noticing that. It's accidental of course. Which one would you prefer on touch devices:

A: you click once for solution, twice for the zoom view (this has the problem that for images without a solution you get straight to the zoom, so you never know what you get)
B: you click a dedicated button for the solution, and click to zoom

Personally I prefer B.
What are the requirements for “related images”? It’s become more difficult to find images in the same area now, I think. You’d have to go into the dec/ra filters yourself now?

If it's a planet, the sun, the moon, an eclipse, a comet, a landscape, noctilucent clouds, etc, it finds other images of the same subject.
If it's deep sky and solved, it finds images in the same area.
If it's deep sky and not solved, it just finds other deep sky images (I'll change it so it looks into the title to see if it can guess a catalog name, as usually people put the name of the subject in the title..

This makes the button "Find images in the same area" redundant, so I skipped it.
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Marco Prelini avatar
Marco Prelini avatar
Testing right now, looks really fast and easyer to use.
Just those "issues" noted until now: if I search NGC 7000 (without quotation marks) it outputs the default feed, i guess that it doesn't find nothing for "ngc" and "7000" and so it goes default, should'nt better to give an error message like "nothing found for "NGC" "7000" to let the user understand better what is going wrong?


Also: there is something strange in the search mechanism: if i search for SH2-175 it outputs still the default feed



But of i send the query for a second time (read: I press the send key a second time) it outputs the correct answer



If i search for SH2-275 SH2117 (as free text) it outputs default feed, shouldn't this search for both keys in text / image title and output all the corresponding results?



If I search SH2-275, then i add SH2-117 it outputs only SH2-275 and SH2-117 only if i sent the query for a second time 



And finally, i don't know it this is an issue but i'm reporting this anyways

When I search for a key (let's say the usual SH2-275) it prompts this, but both if i click on free text or subjects, it insert the key as "subject" (never as free text)



That's all for now
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Hi Marco,

I just fixed this a few minutes ago, please refresh the page and make sure that the footer says this:



You can see the footer for instance if you go to the upload page, as most pages on the search will have infinite scrolling:

https://beta-app.astrobin.com/uploader

Thanks!
Concise
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Marco Prelini:
When I search for a key (let's say the usual SH2-275) it prompts this, but both if i click on free text or subjects, it insert the key as "subject" (never as free text)

Yes, if it recognizes a catalog name it search by subject. This improves the accuracy tho it won't find the unsolved images. I think this is a positive compromise to make.
Marco Prelini avatar
Marco Prelini avatar
That's all for now

If needed: 
Testing on MacBook 15 M3Max With MacOs Sonoma, on Chome version 127.0.6533.122
Marco Prelini avatar
Marco Prelini avatar
Salvatore Iovene:
Hi Marco,

I just fixed this a few minutes ago, please refresh the page and make sure that the footer says this:



You can see the footer for instance if you go to the upload page, as most pages on the search will have infinite scrolling:

https://beta-app.astrobin.com/uploader

Thanks!

Ok, yes I was on -01 build, now I'm on -02 going to test it again
Marco Prelini avatar
Marco Prelini avatar
Salvatore Iovene:
Marco Prelini:
When I search for a key (let's say the usual SH2-275) it prompts this, but both if i click on free text or subjects, it insert the key as "subject" (never as free text)

Yes, if it recognizes a catalog name it search by subject. This improves the accuracy tho it won't find the unsolved images. I think this is a positive compromise to make.

Mmmh yes indeed it is, but maybe it could be useful to let the user force the "fulltext" search? let's say I would find images also through the unresolved ones?
Unless the unresolved images are so few that this feature might become effectively useless.
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Yes it’s supposed to do that if you click on the “free text” suggestion but it’s not working. I’ll fix it!
Marco Prelini avatar
Marco Prelini avatar
Salvatore Iovene:
Yes it’s supposed to do that if you click on the “free text” suggestion but it’s not working. I’ll fix it!

Ahh, that's ok then.

About the search issue instead, it's still there also in the new build.

If i search for sh2-275 I still need to double send the query to get the correct answer.
Looking in the network inspector seems that the first query doesn't send all the needed parameters (but that's something you already know, I guess).
Dominik Weinbrenner avatar
Dominik Weinbrenner avatar
Very powerful search, I like it.
I'm not so sure about the new image viewer though.
Maybe I missed it, but where can I find the comment section in the new image viewer?

When I open an image, I'm very interested in exposure details and equipment used (mainly the scope) and I find the new viewer to be a step back in this regard.
Exposure details are hidden behind another click and the equipment "cloud" looks very cluttered. You cannot really see anything at first glance.

In addition, the side-by-side orientation displays landscape orientation images also at a smaller size than in the old viewer. Scrolling to reveal details is easier than clicking on "more" or "info" buttons.

The new view also only shows the avatars of user not their names, which looks cooler but is detrimental to first glance information.
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Dominik Weinbrenner:
Maybe I missed it, but where can I find the comment section in the new image viewer?

You can click on the Comments button at the bottom.
Dominik Weinbrenner:
Exposure details are hidden behind another click

Most people only care about the total number of hours. Displaying everything pushes everything down and makes the page cluttered. I think this is an improvement!
Dominik Weinbrenner:
the equipment "cloud" looks very cluttered

Yes, they are more compact now for sure. The problem with adding sections for each equipment type is that it makes the list vertically longer and it's an unnecessary label in most cases because it's obvious (tho there's an icon now to tell you what equipment type each item is). Do you have any suggestion to have the best of both worlds?
Dominik Weinbrenner:
You cannot really see anything at first glance.

That will change when you get used to the view. The information is now more organized surely.
petelaa avatar
petelaa avatar
Salvatore Iovene:
Ah, thanks for noticing that. It's accidental of course. Which one would you prefer on touch devices:

A: you click once for solution, twice for the zoom view (this has the problem that for images without a solution you get straight to the zoom, so you never know what you get)
B: you click a dedicated button for the solution, and click to zoom

Personally I prefer B.


I'd prefer B as well. Keeps the guesswork away. And if the "annotated" button is greyed out, it's immediately clear that this is not available.
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petelaa avatar
petelaa avatar
Furthermore (triggered by a comment above on landscape view): if I hold the iPad in portrait orientation, the image is on top and acquisition details at the bottom.
The image is indeed a lot smaller than in the old viewer, which is a shame. Also, in this view the image is not locked on the top, like it is in landscape view.

In both landscape and portrait view I noticed that the arrow buttons on the image are not always working properly.
  • I gave my own username as a search
  • I clicked on the first image (rho Oph) and in this view the arrow buttons are working just fine.
  • But then looking at the "More from this user" I notice first that the order is different. I cannot guess the sorting algorithm, but it's definitely not by date, which is what I would have expected
  • And, most importantly, clicking on any image in the "More from this user" feed, the viewer shows only the forward arrow button (i.e. no back button), and clicking that always brings up the same image (Thor - the first image in the "More from this user" view)
  • This again only has a forward arrow button, taking me to the second image in the feed (Jelly Fish). This again has only a forward arrow button, taking me back to Thor.
  • And now I'm in a loop, where the forward arrow button is effectively a toggle between Thor and Jelly Fish.

It's good to notice that this strange behaviour only happens if I get to the image via the "More from this user" feed. Getting to the same images right out of the search does not exhibit this behaviour.
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Enol Matilla avatar
Enol Matilla avatar
I notice that when you enter any filter from the Filters selector or update an existing filter, the "Free text" filter dissapear and you need to type again.
But when you remove a filter this didn't happened. The "Free text" isn't removed.

Also will be great to have the option to filter by existing equipment in the database. I can only see equipment parameters, no models.

Greetings.
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Enol Matilla:
I notice that when you enter any filter from the Filters selector or update an existing filter, the "Free text" filter dissapear and you need to type again.
But when you remove a filter this didn't happened. The "Free text" isn't removed.

This is part of the issue described by Marco. The fix is almost ready!
Enol Matilla:
Also will be great to have the option to filter by existing equipment in the database. I can only see equipment parameters, no models.

The autocomplete offers you telescopes and cameras, which you can click. For other equipment types (mounts, filters, etc) then you can use the free text as before, thanks!
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
I gave my own username as a search
I clicked on the first image (rho Oph) and in this view the arrow buttons are working just fine.
But then looking at the "More from this user" I notice first that the order is different. I cannot guess the sorting algorithm, but it's definitely not by date, which is what I would have expected
And, most importantly, clicking on any image in the "More from this user" feed, the viewer shows only the forward arrow button (i.e. no back button), and clicking that always brings up the same image (Thor - the first image in the "More from this user" view)
This again only has a forward arrow button, taking me to the second image in the feed (Jelly Fish). This again has only a forward arrow button, taking me back to Thor.
And now I'm in a loop, where the forward arrow button is effectively a toggle between Thor and Jelly Fish.


Thanks for spotting this bug.

First of all, the images in "More from this user" are sorted by likes. Would you like to have them sorted by most recent first?

Regarding the bug, the reason is that when you click on an image in "More from this user" the navigation context for the next/prev buttons is not updated. I'll fix that, thanks!
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John Favalessa avatar
John Favalessa avatar
You have been busy for sure Salvatore!  big thanks.  will definitely take some getting used too but really powerful.  

I do wish to see the number of images of a given search.  I currently multiply the number of pages by 60 to get the totals.   

-john
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
John Favalessa:
I do wish to see the number of images of a given search.  I currently multiply the number of pages by 60 to get the totals.

Quite trivially, the reason I don't display it is that I literally cannot think of a good place that makes sense and is aesthetic, otherwise I have no reason not to. Any suggestions?

I also imagined that it's either few and then you see them all, or it's so many that you don't reach the end in which case it's just "many" and what's the reason to know the exact number?
John Favalessa avatar
John Favalessa avatar
Can you put it in the menu "Sort Results" at the top above the "Sort by" choices?
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
John Favalessa:
Can you put it in the menu "Sort Results" at the top above the "Sort by" choices?

I think it's kinda hidden away that way. Perhaps just left of the icons at the end of the text input?
John Favalessa avatar
John Favalessa avatar
Yes!  you are the best 👍🏻
gmadkat avatar
gmadkat avatar
This is an awesome feature, Salvatore! I rested on my iPhone for a bit it works really well very fast response and easy to navigate! Will test some more and report if I find anything!