Comments on: Live search ‘public beta’

By: XeroCool

XeroCool — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 04:28:15 +0000

Sexy. I have one on my site. Pretty cool.

By: Lewis

Lewis — Tue, 31 May 2005 04:24:16 +0000

It would be nice if what was inputted was remembered so that a user does not have to re-type the search terms after each time they click to investigate an article.

You could use PHP to GET the search terms and place them as a value attribute in the input element.

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Mon, 30 May 2005 18:03:14 +0000

Thanks for the comments everyone - keep them coming.

So, just to summarise:

1. Make sure there’s something to indicate a search is taking place.

2. Improve the speed.

3. Pressing enter should take you somewhere - a more complete search results page?

Did I miss anything?

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 29 May 2005 09:14:36 +0000

Followup:
Why, in the javascriptlive preview, am I getting textile commands converted properly, like _italics_ and
* lists

but in the post, that doesn’t happen?

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 29 May 2005 09:12:23 +0000

Great search box . . . one little complaint. I think another user mentioned this as well, but there _needs_ to be a way to show the user whether it is still searching, or nothing has shown up. Currently it just shows no results until the results come, but since there’s a lag, it’s difficult to know whether it’s still searching or just found nothing.

Also, unrelated, a few notes the comment-form here (which I must say is very pretty), since I’ve never commented here before (although I’ve been reading for a while):
* The label for the text “Live Preview” points to the URL input area instead of the live preview checkbox
* The area that shows up when the email address input is active links to Gravatar, but when I tried to click on the link (Fx 1.0.4) that un-selected the input and thus the text vanished with the link I was trying to click on. Not sure how to remedy that, though. Could be Fx problem?
* Be consistent with your form labels. Neither “Remember my personal information” nor “Notify me of follow-up comments?” are labels. Bigger areas to click are better, and those little teeny boxes are a pain on today’s high-res monitors.

But really, great site. I really enjoyed your series on typography. Thanks.

By: Thomas B. Aschim

Thomas B. Aschim — Sun, 29 May 2005 06:57:36 +0000

That’s just lovely!

By: Julian

Julian — Sun, 29 May 2005 06:45:35 +0000

It’s very nicely done, but it feels a little bit too slow. I think a “searching” graphic would be nice.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 29 May 2005 06:00:21 +0000

Without reading the other comments here are some thoughts.

Try not to make the search box expand past the bottom of the page, do a search for “c”, and youll get the idea. Perhaps a link, or button that lead to more results could help overspill.

Pressing “enter” should take you to the first result.

Add a spinny thing, ala Dunstan

When hovering the a result, make the whole row space clickable, use the same effect you have for the arrow keys perhaps?

Hitting close list and then repeating a search kinda make the search not work at all.

Search for “wrap”, the results dont quite fully mask the first colum and might be confusing with the information underneath, perhaps you could either make this column white when you search, or reduce the opacity.

Perahps you can cache the results so if I repeat one, the results are displayed instantly.

Using Firefox Windows 2000

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Sun, 29 May 2005 01:42:42 +0000

Urban - Thanks for the feedback and really good comment about the (esc) bit, that was just default in the plug-in and it has never sat well with me usability wise.

Sam & Lode - Thanks for your comments guys, it looks more and more like I’m going to have to hack the crap out of this plug-in to increase the speed but to also add the extra functionality like limiting the results and pressing return to go to a results page.

As Textpattern and Wordpress both have plug-ins available which do this, and aas their both php, I wonder how much work would be involved in trying to them in an EE environment to query and EE database…

Damn, I had a feeling this was going to be a little more involved!

By: Lode

Lode — Sat, 28 May 2005 21:16:42 +0000

* Works fine in Firefox 1.0.4 on Mac/Lin/Win
* Nicely integrated in your design
* It feels a bit slow, compared to the live searches of Binary Bonsai (which gives you results as you are typing) and 1976design (which maybe isn’t any faster than yours, but does provide a visual clue that it is searching something).

By: Sam

Sam — Sat, 28 May 2005 07:59:13 +0000

Looks great and works fine in Safari 2.0. After using a lot of other ‘Live Searches’ I actually typed in a word and expected the results to show straight away. Only after waiting a few moments (as per your message) I thought I’d hit enter.

More of a personal issue more than anything I’d say, like Jon mentioned, the return taking you to a full blown search page is what I think people may be after.. unless they get the result they are looking for in the dropdown.

Well integrated into your site however.. good work.