savory and tags

Tags are used in a number of different contexts on the internet today. For example, social bookmarking websites, image gallery websites, blogs, etc.

Tagging provides savory users with a way to ask savory to return a given list of URLs that meet a semi specific list of requirements. The number of tags a URL can have associated with it is arbitrary. In practice, there are often a lot of tags

savory gives you two primary views into your tag data; table and cloud.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-679 aligncenter" title="Table or Cloud" src="http://caphrim.net/tim/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Screenshot-12-300x168.png" alt="" width="300" height="168" /></a></p>
In my own opinion, the table view is more functional. The cloud view can often look very messy due to how many tags exist in the database.

In the table view, savory lists all the tags. Each set of tags has a header. In the image above, the header is "1". This means that all the tags in this group begin with the number "1". Each tag is a hyperlink that will take you to the URL searching page, filtered by URLs that are tagged with the selected tag. Next to each hyperlink is a count of the number of URLs that have that particular tag applied to them.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-680 aligncenter" title="show all" src="http://caphrim.net/tim/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Screenshot-5-300x130.png" alt="" width="300" height="130" /></a></p>
Clicking this link will display a modal dialog window which you can scroll through to find a listing of all the tags for that particular header.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-681 aligncenter" title="Modal window" src="http://caphrim.net/tim/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Screenshot-3-300x101.png" alt="" width="300" height="101" /></a></p>
The tag cloud view is a very busy view. It functions in nearly the same way as the table view though. The tags are clickable but there are no URL counts next to them. Instead, the size of the tag word denotes how many URLs are associated with it. The more URLs tagged with that tag, the bigger the word.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-682 aligncenter" title="Tag cloud" src="http://caphrim.net/tim/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Screenshot-22-300x180.png" alt="" width="300" height="180" /></a></p>
Finally, on the tag page, you have the ability to filter tags by strings found in those tags. This is essential for searching because too many tags make your eyes glaze over. savory can filter out the cruft for you if you have a general idea of what you're looking for.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-683 aligncenter" title="Filter tags" src="http://caphrim.net/tim/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Screenshot-4-300x91.png" alt="" width="300" height="91" /></a></p>
That wraps up savory's view into tags and how you can use them to gauge the usage of the system. More articles to come that describe yet more features of savory that make it awesome.