I dislike the way ID photos are now presented

Unsure if this is a bug or feature… Either way, I hate it. It really kills workflow and makes Identifying an unenjoyable task.

In Identify mode on the website-

Previously, clicking on the record would open it up in the same tab (overlaying the ID page). Clicking on a photo would open it up to a sort of postcard-sized image you could look at more closely (still in the same tab). Nice, clean, crisp presentation that’s easy on the eye. Clicking on the same photo would give you superzoom (still in same tab) to really get close to the features. All good, great system, didn’t take me off the page!

Now, click on the record and it opens up in the same tab (still overlaying the ID page). Clicking on a photo zooms the photo within the same photo box on the record. This is a massive problem because a large chunk of the photo is obscured by the thumbnails at the bottom of subsequent pics for the record. I click the arrow in the top right of the pic and it will open the pic in a new tab, where I have to enlarge it and scroll around to see everything.

This is not good. Now the presentation of the photos is not clean and easily ‘readable’, and forcing users to switch between tabs really slows things down and breaks workflow.

This change seems to have come in alongside the feature that lets you see there are multiple pics when you hover your cursor over a record. On the ID thumbnails its just so tiny, busy and unpleasant to look at. It’s over designed. What was wrong with the previous system that this was a solution for?

You’ve gone backwards here iNat! Its not conducive to encouraging more identifications, or improving the quality of IDs. Please consider rolling back to the previous, superior, Identify picture presentation system!

[Love you guys, just… don’t tweak what aint broke! <3 ]

I actually really like the new presentation. It took a little to get used to not having an Agree button when there are multiple photos, but I like that it forces people to take an extra moment to think before hitting Agree.

As for opening photos in a separate tab, I was really happy about this! I was constantly having to open the observations to properly zoom into photos to the level I needed. This new way, I can see plenty of detail much more easily without having to go out into the whole observation. The only thing that would be nice is to not have to scroll around in the zoomed photo.

Thanks for the updates, developers!

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From About the Bug Reports category:

“By “bug” we mean that something is not working the way it is intended to. This is not a place to make a feature request (there’s a separate category for that), nor is it a place to start a discussion about how iNaturalist does things - you can do that in the General category.”

This is an intended feature and is explained here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-number-of-photos-to-thumbnails-on-identify-page/2907/14 So it doesn’t belong in Bug Reports. I’m moving it to General, and I also added “I” to the subject.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure terms like “I hate it” are helpful. If you dislike something, please state why and propose a solution.

I understand that. I was unsure because the photo zooming within the same photo box presented so poorly I couldn’t tell if it was a bug or not.

I rolled my other criticisms into the same post as there seemed to have been several changes made to the ID system alongside the abovementioned and if they were connected it seemed better than making multiple posts about it all.

Its a colloquialism. I’ll refrain from using it in future.

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To be honest I’m not the biggest fan of the mouseover -> shows multiple photos on thumbnail but I thought I’d give it a few days to see if that was just normal aversion to change. Curious to hear others’ opinions after it’s been around a bit.

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The icon in the bottom left corner is sufficient to indicate there are multiple photos. It, too, adds to the overall excessive busyness of the thing.

I’d keep the photo count icon and do away with the mouseover.

Edit to add- I have seen other posts complaining of slow load times on photos/ID page (and have suffered myself on occasion). Does adding additional animations and ‘moving parts’ not add to the loadtime? Is simpler not better when you already have an image-heavy page?

I prefer just the “multiple images” icon… not a fan of the smaller multi thumbs… I would definitely prefer it to cycle through the photos while hovering over the thumbnail, or maybe while hovering over the multiple image icon

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