Tag browser

A problem that I have with the usage of tags on services, is the lack of traversing possibilities. In order to show the tags that are used, they are use presented in a list format: an alphabetical list of tags. Not really useful if you have hundreds or even thousands of tags. The other presentation method is the tag cloud, where the size of the tag indicates it's popularity. Not very useful either, just eye candy.

Tags are related and as a user I want to see the relations between tags. And I want to see which items are available for a set of tags. I think this was marvellously solved in WebNoteHappy by Luis de la Rosa. This application allows a user to manage his bookmarks. One of the (optional) panes of this application is a tag browser.

This tag browser shows multiple interdependent column (like the column's view in Apple's Finder window). The first column initially shows all tags for all items in the application. The user can the scroll down this list and select a tag. What happens then is that the second column will show all tags that are related to the selected tag in the first column. Naturally this is a smaller list and allows the user to focus quickly on the items that a user looks for.

If required the user can select a tag in the second column to show up related tags in the third column. And this can go on until the available tags are exhausted.

A great way browse through your bookmarks. I created a XBEL output for my weblog, which I then imported into WebNoteHappy. Then search and tag-browsing is a great help. One of the lessons is that I would like to have such a tag browser for any MicroContent Client. Second lesson is that MarsEdit lacks a history view, at some stage older Items are deleted. I have to checkout what Ecto does here.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • type • blog • bookmark
PermaLink • (2) Comments • TrackBacks • Trackback URL

Comments

Dear Arnaud, I often thought about the idea of a tag browser as a problem. Especially when you manage a large number of tags. The column view is a direction in which one can go, but its not the end. I feel its slightly abroad, since the column view suggests that tags are structured hierarchically, like in the other popular example use of the column view, the file system. Tags are rather clouded graphs and I feel like finding a better solution for assembling tags by walking a graph…

I agree that the situation is more complicated and that a tag cloud is more like a network. This columnar approach for browsing the tag cloud helped me a lot however. It is one of the first approaches that was in fact useful. I use a strict hierarchical approach to tags so it does fit my bill exactly. I guess however that this columnar view can easily be adapted to show the network.

Please enter Your Comments