Interface Overview - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Management - page 44

The purpose of this feature is to help users who are working simultaneously on
many MySQL servers, and like to have visual clues about each server. Another
possible scenario—a busy database administrator—who takes calls from customers
and opens many phpMyAdmin windows. He then assigns priorities using the color
picker, say red for top priority—you get the idea.
Sliders
You'll see on some pages, a small plus sign followed by a controlling label—either
Options or Details . A click on the label opens a slider to reveal a section of the
interface, which is believed to be less often used in day-to-day work. As some persons
prefer to immediately see the whole interface—at the expense of screen space—there is
a configuration parameter that controls how the sliders are initially set:
$cfg['InitialSlidersState'] = 'closed';
The default value of closed means that sliders must be opened by a click on the
label; you might have guessed that the reverse value is open . This Javascript feature
comes from the Mootools library located at http://mootools.net .
Character sets, collations and language
A character set describes how symbols for a specific language or dialect are encoded.
A collation contains rules to compare and sort the characters of a character set. The
character set used to store our data may be different from the one used to display it,
leading to data discrepancies. Thus, a need to transform the data arises.
Since MySQL 4.1.x, the MySQL server does the character recoding work for us. Also,
MySQL enables us to indicate the character set and collation for each database, each
table, and even each field. A default character set for a database applies to each of
its tables, unless it is overridden at the table level. The same principle applies to
every field.
Collations
When strings have to be compared and sorted, precise rules must be followed by
the system (MySQL in this case). For example, is "A" equivalent to "a"? Is 'André'
equivalent to "Andre"? A set of these rules is called a collation.
A proper choice of collation is important for obtaining the intended results when
searching data (for example from phpMyAdmin's Search page), and also when
sorting data.