There are now two free Android phone apps, one for flower identification,
When in bloom: add "NOW" and use the present date. Chances are, if someone is trying to identify something they're looking at, it may be currently in bloom.
Whether or not it is known that the plant has roots or a bulb.
sizes could be expressed in metric as well.
Also note that the diagram links for "Leaf veins", "Leaf edges", and "Leaf Petiole" all come up with a forbidden on the other site you're linking to.
Excellent feedback - I appreciate them (it's hard to get honest and detailed criticism). Unfortunately, while I'm good at Perl and some other languages, AJAX is not among them. My lame excuse is that the advantage of keeping it all server-side is that the page is then usable everywhere, even if you have a crummy phone with lousy web connectivity. Still, I'm hoping to learn Javascript this summer, so maybe it might be able to come into play.
The diagrams being "forbidden" is quite odd - they work fine from my location. I'll have to think how to solve that one - probably need to search out Creative Commons images.
Roots & bulb would involve Real Work, of adding additional characteristics for all plants in the database, but I'll think about it. My rationalization for the day: since they're wildflowers being identified, I almost don't want to encourage anyone digging them up.
Date's a nice idea, but hard to do with a static web page tied to Perl. For the Android app version, I'll definitely suggest these ideas
- the "automatically update and also gray out options" is one I've wanted to see in a "real" program, unlike my static page.
Thanks again,
Eric
Oh, and I should mention that the code and data is free to download (data's just a big text file, a grid of "has characteristic/doesn't have it" characters), so anyone can have a go at making another version.
Eric
AJAX is a methodology, not a 'language', you could have whatever on the backend - PHP, ASP, Perl, etc (though the first two are by far the more common), and yea, on the client side, you'd generally use JavaScript - though it could be Java, or even ActionScript (Flash).
Even using Javascript to expand and contract the individual sections of the form can be useful, and all that stuff is done via DOM (Document Object Model) - structure your page with good CSS, and if the user somehow doesn't have JS, the WHOLE page shows, and if they do, it condenses it and goes 'smart'.
Wasn't all of them, just the three I mentioned.
Well, if it's an SQL database, you can add the field to the existing db table using "ALTER", and initially populate it with NULL, or some value to signify "I haven't set the rooting type", As you get info for bulb vs root vs. rhizome (such as Iris and hops) for each of the plants you do have, you can assign the actual value, and if someone does select that characteristic, you can flag all the records with NULL as "possible, attribute not yet added" or somesuch. i.e. everything remains server side. Basically, you could use it to ELIMINATE those records which have been id'd to NOT be the root type chosen.
Of course, I'm thinking in broader terms of plant identification, not just wildflowers.
Have you poked about the USDA plant database?
The base of a lot of bulb plants is fairly identifiable. Actually, the 'blade' leaf form is almost universally a giveaway.
Nah, a checkbox for "blooming right now!", and when the Perl script processes the form data, it determines the current date. Client side, Server side, at most you're 23 hours time difference.
Might be worth your while to start looking into PHP (if the servers you use support it). Your realtimerendering stite is hosted with Apache, so PHP is a likelyhood for you.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.