sul-dlss
Improve Functionality of IIIF Icon in Searchworks
The current implementation of the IIIF icon on our platform is overly complex and potentially confusing for users. The icon is intended to be dragged and dropped in order to open the image in the preferred viewer, but this presumes A) That a user knows what a iiif viewer is, and B) has chosen one that works with our implementation of this icon (I've been unable to get the drag and drop to work with Mise or the Mirador demo).
or...
If the user Clicks on the icon, they are taken to the SUL IIIF Info page at https://library.stanford.edu/iiif
Neither of these results seem useful for users who are probably not familiar with IIIF.
Problem Description
- Complex HTML Tagging: The current HTML structure for the icon is doing too much and may overwhelm the user.
- Ineffective Tooltip: The tooltip "Drag icon to any IIIF viewer" is misleading since it does not work for many viewers. It expects users to understand what a IIIF viewer is and find one that works with our implementation of the links.
- User Experience Issues:
- Users should not need to know about IIIF viewers or navigate complex instructions to use the icon effectively.
- Raw IIIF Manifest link is difficult to find at the bottom of the metadata panel
- IIIF Icon issues repeated in the Share modal.
Proposed Solution
Simplify Functionality:
On click, the icon should either:
- Open the image in the preferred viewer (Mise Viewer, if that is our choice for Stanford users, but it doesn't seem to work for many images, see image below).
- Or Copy the unadulterated manifest URL to the user's clipboard.
- Consider accommodating both behaviors?
Improve Tooltip and User Guidance:
- Update the tooltip to provide clear and actionable instructions.
- Example: Change to "Click to open in the viewer" or "Click to copy manifest URL."
Review IIIF Icon behavior in other venues:
- Earthworks
- Spotlight
- Others?
Just had this exceptionally relevant demo shared with me in the IIIF Maps group, this morning:
https://iiif.gdmrdigital.com/import_to_viewers/index.html
"a number of proof of concepts that show the different interaction patterns the new IIIF Content State API supports. The Content State standard is indented to allow a user to transfer what they are looking at from one viewer to another viewer. This might be due to preferring say Mirador over the UV or it could be transferring from an institution's Mirador to a version which has annotation functionality available."