I love the idea of a countdown clock. I never even though of that, but that would be so much fun, and extremely useful!
A few other things:
1) Retain plant links in 'recent events'
When viewing recent events, it would really help to have the "Affected item" column retain the links for the plant so that we don't have to Google-search the newly-added items in a separate link. (An alternative is to have an option on the full tradelist to "Show only activities from the last ____ hours.") This is important so that people can easily look at and rate items that have been added since they looked through the entire tradelist.
2) Greater ability to move between swap pages
I'm frequently ending up on a page that requires me to go back to Tools & Apps and re-enter the swap just to move in-between pages within the swap...maybe this is more of an issue for the host when working with the host control panel?) More navigation links would save me a lot of time and unnecessary clicks between pages. In the seed swap forums, you have a link back to the seed swaps's main page (in my case, a link that says "DND's ALL SEEDS SWAP (Int'l) - #3") in the link menu just above the reply field. Maybe simply putting that link on each of the pages in the swap (including the host control pages) would be a simple fix to the navigation issue?
3) This might be a bug?:
When I click on the "Swap Host Control Panel" and then click the link at the bottom of that page that says "Return to the Swap Host Control Panel", it throws me into a page to create a new swap.
4) Ability for the host to allow late-adds
I know this was brought up previously and was somewhat controversial. I'm not dead-set toward having this ability, but I thought I would mention it again now that there have been a few swaps and we can accurately judge whether or not this would be beneficial.
5) Alternative picture options in descriptions! :)
If there were an option to have two separate pictures for a single entry, it would greatly help those of us who are adding hybridized seeds and want to show both parents without having to spend hours upon hours editing and saving photos. Currently, we have to find a picture of the pod parent, find a picture of the pollen parent, create a new image and paste both parent's pictures to the new image, re-size to try and fit it into the picture ratio currently set forth as best as we can, save the photo, THEN post it. And we have to do that for every picture we want to post. I think I had about 15-ish packets of daylily seeds last swap and it probably took me the equivalent of an entire day just to do the pictures for them. Allowing two pictures would also allow us to include a picture of the plant as well as a picture of the growing instructions on the package (if it's a commercial seed).
An alternative would be to atleast allow an option for a double-wide photo, which wouldn't eliminate much of the picture editing time for each entry, but would atleast allow for space to see both parents better.
6) Hybridizer option in seed entry
Allow for a 'hybridized seed' option in the plant entry screen whereby TWO plant links can be added, one for 'pod parent' and one for 'pollen parent'. Members could use this to look at the possible outcomes for the seedlings from those seeds.
I hesitate to say 'two or more plant links' because if one of the parents is unregistered, trying to determine potential outcomes of the seeds/seedlings by 'mixing' information in our heads from four entries in the database is exponentially more difficult. (And the more genetic possibilities, the less relevant the genetic info from each entry is.) Imagine having to look up all of the potential genetic traits in the following cross: [(American Freedom x Tuscawilla Tigress) x (French Confection x Nikki Schmith)]....'mixing' the possibilities in your head would be overwhelming and leave you with little idea of the likely outcome(s). Two plants, I think, is about the most people can reasonably extrapolate from.
