[barryroad]

So I go into:
Third-Party Pentax Lenses - Reviews and Database » Tokina Lenses » Zoom Lenses
and I just scratch my head on the default sortation order for the lenses listed there. It is also curious that the "find focal lengths beginning with" feature does not work at all in this particular listing of lenses.

Now, I am not going to claim to be a Tokina zoom lens expert, but I know enough about the history of a few of these lenses to know that there is no easy peasy way to programatically sort them into a sensible order. The problem is the "confusingly similar but not quite exactly the same" names Tokina gave to all the lenses they built over the years that have the same focal length range. It is particularly a problem for all those variations of the 28-70 zoom that Tokina built over the years. It is so confusing in Tokina's case that I have to wonder whether the reviews are actually lined up with the lenses that were allegedly being reviewed.

To sort this correctly, you would have to have a feature that would allow a sort order to be imposed on a list of lenses that was separate and distinct from the name of the lens or the focal length of the lens. That would be ideal. Perhaps not realistic. A second-best idea would be to prefix each lens name with an alphanumeric index number (a "Dewey Decimal"-type number) that was selected with foreknowledge about how the forum system default sortation algorithm works. That is, force the system to impose a pre-selected, sensible order with the knowledge of how the system works. These sorts of "Dewey Decimal" index numbers would be incredibly ugly, and so I wouldn't suggest doing that for all the lens review pages. But, I would in the case of the Tokina zoom lens page.

Just my 2 cents.

[Adam]

We're working on standardizing our third-party lens entries similar to what we've done with Pentax lenses, where you can sort by focal length, series, etc. in a very clear manner:

Pentax Lens Search | PentaxForums.com

Stay tuned for that!