I was thinking the same Janice, if the search engine is to be user friendly it needs to be simple and easily understood.
Ideally it would be good to have the best of both, where it's user friendly but also a good identification aid.
So, we could use the drop down boxes with titles above:
Perianth (petals) and Corona (cup)
Personally, I think it's a great idea to be specific about the perianth and cup colours, but to keep it to a basic colour or we get into too much detail for both perianth and cup, some cups are described as having three colours! We need to think about how these colours will be described on each entry in the database so the search engine will pick up the colours on a search. When I see one described with a cup colour such as on Emerald Light, we have GYO or green, yellow and orange. I'm thinking, whaaaat? I can see it has a more green throat, and an orange edge, the part in between fades from a stronger green to a greenish-yellow. To tie that up with a search could be difficult, it would seem to me best to stick with the main base colour which I would say is green. But, if each entry in the database is going to be described according to the official sources then we have a problem. Is it best to just list the base colour? The rest is obvious once brought up in a search if there are photos, if there are no photos then the description would be lacking.
To have a credible database it would seem necessary to describe each flower with all colours, if we did that I guess the search engine would pick them up anyway with the base colour only in the search engine?
Is it possible to have three drop down boxes, one with perianth colour, one with corona colour, another as a simple combination search. The simple search would make it easier for those wanting say a white perianth with red centre, or all white, all yellow, but I guess that can also be done with the drop down boxes!
OK I think I have answered my own thoughts, but the original worry was there was too many variables with separating the perianth and corona colours, for example "white with orange or red" would give a good variety within that range. That would mean the search engine and colour descriptions would have to tie in, so the search engine would have to be able to pick up those with base colour of white perianth and a cup base colour of red or orange or both. I don't know how difficult that would be, Dave will have a better idea. I'm taking notice of how the colour search has been arranged on the daffodil site here which I linked to, they are experts and will have known the most common colour combinations (with the exception of the green which I added as there are some with a green cup). They have also made it so you can search for dwarf or intermediate heights, scented and historical varieties. These features I feel sure would be of use to many.
