Throughout its development, Sajara has focused on enabling users to search for digital assets based on geographic criteria such as address, intersection, and neighborhood or by navigating around a map. While our standard search page with its many thumbnails remains a powerful window to retrieve digital assets, we recently decided to create a new search page that expanded the map to full-screen size and put an even greater emphasis on Sajara’s geographic search capabilities.
The new Sajara geographic search page is available in Japanese Gardens of the World, a sample application that demonstrates Sajara's capabilities.
In order to try out our idea for another geographic-based search page, we turned to Japanese Gardens of the World, our sample application powered by Sajara. To create the map, we utilized the same technology that drives our thumbnail search page, OpenLayers and ExtJS. These upgrades offered us increases in loading speed and better compatibility with new browser versions.
While the map-based search page focuses more on geographically displaying the results of a search, it still contains all the original search functionality. A drop-down ‘Search By’ menu contains fields allowing users to search by address, keyword, topics, collections, time period, and a variety of advanced search options. In order to help users keep track of their search criteria, we also implemented a new search feature called ‘Active Filters’, which provides a quick reminder of the selected criteria.
'Fisheye' thumbnail view of photographs in the current map view.
The results of a search are displayed as a row of thumbnails across the bottom of the map with flags on the thumbnails corresponding to flags on the map. The thumbnails expand as you mouse over them. We used some simple math and javascript to implement this fish-eye effect, allowing users to quickly view basic data about an asset without requiring them to load a new page. A larger, more detailed page with additional information and photographs of the garden is available by clicking on the thumbnail.
The map-based search provides users with another option for searching through and browsing assets in their digital collection, but the thumbnail search is also still available as a way to view search results. Using the ‘Search’ menu, users can select whether they would like to search the database using the map or thumbnail view. They can also switch between the two pages thanks to the ‘Map/Thumbnail’ button in the upper right corner of the page.
Make sure you visit our Japanese Gardens of the World sample application and let us know what you think!
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