What do you think of the new search interface and the UI?

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Hi. the search interface and the general look was changed recently (April 11). The change is not on the master branch yet (will merge after collecting some feedback and fixing a few things).

Search is now sticky (one caveat - no full text search temporarily - will be restored soon).

So with search you can type query (now for title match only), then add or remove tags (removal only works for all tags at once at this point), revise or delete query while keeping the tag selection. Also you can change sort order and scope of your search (logged in users get another scope - "favorite" - other useful scopes will be added later) without losing the selection.

Also in addition to descending sort there is a reverse - just hit the same sort tab again - for example you can get oldest if you hit newest tab again, etc.

Finally, if you search first and then click "ask a question" you will inherit the title from your query (does not work backwards yet).

Search query will persist if you visit individual questions, vote, star or comment them, etc, but will be lost once you walk more than one step away from the question search view.

There is also rudimentary question search by user - if you click on tag on the user profile (only there at the moment)

Type of search is also tab-sensitive (search tags in tags view, users in people view and questions everywhere else).

Finally - unanswered tab is gone - instead there is "unanswered" scope.

What do you think of all that?

Could you give some usability feedback?

Thanks a bunch!

13.2k

Evgeny

updated 2010-04-12 13:32:32 -0600, asked 2010-04-11 21:44:51 -0600

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I think UI is more like Shapado now, but Its cool! And unanswered scope is good idea too.

Regarding cnprog, it has limitations on users names like cannot use space, dots, and a lots of other characters, and cannot be duplicate with others. looks like those are inheriting in askbot too. And I still don't know how to enable badges, and I dont see badges on askbot too. I was testing cnprog on ask.my-mm.org, I might want to try yours soon too.

Mark

answered 2010-04-12 00:05:23 -0600

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Hey Mark, thanks. Username regex is now '^[\w ]+' and it's not unicode - this will change. It is true that username must be unique in the database at this point - some people like this restrictions, while others don't. We'll relax this one and add a boolean option USERNAME_UNIQUE.

Evgeny (2010-04-12 10:53:49 -0600) edit

to install badges you need to load sql_scripts/badges.sql (I've just done it) directly into the database - but this will be automated on install soon. - Evgeny (1 min ago)

Evgeny (2010-04-12 11:12:00 -0600) edit

"python manage.py once_award_badges" and the same for multi_award_badges.

Evgeny (2010-04-12 11:35:57 -0600) edit

Thanks Evgeny, Thats great!

Mark (2010-04-14 22:33:33 -0600) edit

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It is better now. However, I am afraid the difference is not that significant ...

Some thoughts:

Search is very slow
When you narrow down the result by tags, there is no way to go back. Maybe you should look at how google implements this feature. Look at how they allow users to sort the result or narrow the result by some criteria.

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DealsVistaCom

answered 2010-04-12 00:03:58 -0600

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hey thanks. yes, I'll add a small amendment - when you click on "questions" tab from question view search will reset. search resets every time you click the logo. However there is a "reset tags or start over" link right under the number of questions - that take care of it.

Evgeny (2010-04-12 10:40:28 -0600) edit

thanks for the sobering feedback, btw :)! after this I'll focus on admin interface, installation and data imports.

Evgeny (2010-04-12 10:42:32 -0600) edit

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I will not agree that difference isn't that significant; but this is my opinion. UI is pure visual perfection! The eye focus is where it should be, on the main content, not at sidebars etc. Something that stackoverflow is good at, but your new UI design is much better.

Aleksandar

answered 2010-04-13 00:05:08 -0600

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well, thanks for the compliment. I also hope to make people take search differently - that they can revise and tweak it and return to the same selected question list by hitting the "questions" tab again. (however there is space for some tweaks to make sure that search is not too sticky)

Evgeny (2010-04-13 11:02:36 -0600) edit

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What do you think of the new search interface and the UI? edit

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What do you think of the new search interface and the UI?