Customizing the order in which icons appear on the userpics page

[ceesoo]

Title:
Customizing the order in which icons appear on the userpics page

Area:
icon management

Summary:
For users who have a lot of icons, or accumulate a lot of icons over time, it would be nice to be able to move our icons up or down the list freely, so that we don't have to worry about what order to upload icons in if we want certain icons next to each other.

Description:
====SUGGESTION====
A way for us to be able to change the order our icons are displayed in after we've already uploaded them.

What I'm envisioning is having two arrows (up and down) next to the icons on the Manage Icons page (to the right of each icon?). When you click the arrows, the icon (and keywords and etc) will move up or down the list, switching places with the icon before or after it. This will help people using 100 and 250 icons to organize their userpics page to their liking without the hassle of deleting icons and reuploading them in the desired order if they have icons they're uploading later that they wish were showing at the top, or after this specific icon, etc...

Currently there's a "Upload Order" display and "Keyword Order" display on the userpics page. It seems like there could be room for a "Custom Order" link? Ideally the custom order would be the default, so if a user decides to use a custom order it would be what shows up to other users when they click the userpics page (in which case you probably don't need "upload order"...).

====WHY IT'S THE BEST SOLUTION?====
Well, mostly it's just that there's no way to do this but the hard way, currently. The description above is just what I imagine would be easiest to deal with from the user end, but honestly I (and I know some other RPers) would probably be pleased with having ANY way to be able to customize icon order right now that doesn't involve deleting/reuploading.

====PROBLEMS/DRAWBACKS====
I'm not sure how easy it'd be to implement a change in UI like that? Especially if we want things moving around when a button is clicked. Would icons have to be renamed where they're stored to change their place on the list? Would it be more strain on the servers to have this as an option? Possibly the arrow method would take too many clicks to move a new icon to the top of the list?

====OTHER WAYS TO IMPLEMENT SUGGESTION====
A) Have a separate Manage Icons page dedicated specifically to changing the order of your icons. So you leave uploading new icons the way it is, and add a new page for moving them around.

OR

B) On the current Manage Icons page, a new text box could be added next to the icons, where you enter in the number for the order you want it to show up, the same way the order of sidebar modules is handled on some of the journal styles. You could change the numbers around to your liking and then when you hit "save" the icons are moved to their new positions.

====LAST WORDS====
So those are the three ideas I've got and I'm sure there are other ways or a combination of the above ways to accomplish the task, but the most important thing to me is having the option to customize what order my icons show up in. Thanks for considering!

Poll #8858 Customizing the order in which icons appear on the userpics page

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 98

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
42 (42.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
27 (27.6%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (5.1%)

(I have no opinion)
24 (24.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[ceesoo]

...

It occurs to me another way to do this is for DW to simply number each icon and then in the upload form have a field where you can put a number for where on the list you want your new icon to be uploaded 8|a. If you leave it blank, it uploads to the bottom. If you enter a number, it inserts it where you want it.

You'd still have to delete and reupload if you wanted to move an old icon though, but at least you could put it where you want it? PROBLEM is that this loses efficiency if you want to move more than three or four icons that are already uploaded.

But maybe this method might be easier to code??


I wonder if this is too many ideas to vote on...

[kyrielle]

You could require only one icon to be moved by number at a time, if it presented an issue.

Or you could just say "when all is said and done, order them by the numbers they now have. If two icons have the same number, put them together, and keep them in the order they had on the page."

So if you have:
001 RED ICON
002 SAD ICON
003 SLEEPY ICON
004 ANIME ICON
005 FOOD ICON
006 BLUE ICON

And you edit to:
001 RED ICON
002 SAD ICON
005 SLEEPY ICON
004 ANIME ICON
005 FOOD ICON
001 BLUE ICON

When you save, you'd end up with:

001 RED ICON
001 BLUE ICON
002 SAD ICON
004 ANIME ICON
005 SLEEPY ICON
005 FOOD ICON

[ceesoo]

Ooh, that'd work intuitively enough from the user side that you could figure it out after playing with it a couple times, I think.

I'd like to see the icons renumbered 001-006 after it was saved just so it's easier to go again if you want to play with the order some more.

And I guess if we're doing that much we may as well put the number field on the upload form too, so it's a one step thing to upload it to the right place, instead of upload to the bottom, then renumber.

[matgb]

Suggestion:

Renumber to 010, 020 etc as per the links list, that way renumbering is easy and done in the same way as another feature, so you can give an icon say 015 and when you hit save it renumbers properly.

I regularly mess up my module numbering when redoing my sidebar and have two with the same number, having numbers in multiples of ten gives wiggle room.

[marahmarie]

Especially since you can jump them by an order of 5 (65, 70, 75, etc). Which I do all the time after I make the same mistake and screw up my numbering with repeated numbers *or* realize I put a link at 370 when I mean for it to be at 360, or whatever.

But of the two suggestions I think numbering icons link-list style is quicker and more keyboard friendly than drag and drop, which Wordpress uses for arranging widgets and such, and which I like, but on a slow and cumbersome connection/computer is often pure torture.

In the last few months I burned out part of my motherboard, fried my video card and my flat panel almost went on fire - all at once! I haven't replaced any of it and don't intend to as long as what's left keeps on working. My remaining half-of-a-computer has made me much more sensitive to how much better/faster/less painful keyboard options can make things.

edited to add verbiage.

[archangelbeth]

Amen -- I have, er, dragcave.net dragons, and I use "sort by numbering" rather than the drag and drop version.

Edit: Thus I am voting "implement with changes."

Re: edited to add verbiage.

[marahmarie]

Changed my vote to yours. I had voted "no opinion" but after I realized just how strongly I feel about the need for more low-tech options for people on slow wifi and/or slow computers (and I'm on both), I wrote an entire post about it, so I should vote accordingly. :)

[montuos]

Yes, this, on both points.