Re: [Usability]Re: A (Re)"search" idea



--- Michael Toomim <toomim uclink4 berkeley edu>
wrote:
> Joaquin Cuenca Abela wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > My usability profesor at the university showed us
> > several (imo) very good ideas.
> 
> What you're describing is very similar to I-Search
> in XEmacs/Emacs.  You 
> might want to take a look at it.

I know what emacs does (I use it all the time).  The
main difference is that you can't see *all* the
matches at once in emacs (only the visible ones).  Ie,
the little lines in the scrollbar are missing.

Also, the replace in emacs is exactly as confusing as
in everything else.  Do you never did an extra
replace?  or missed a word that should be replaced?

> There are problems with the (X)Emacs appraoch as
> well.  For instance, 
> newbies often don't see the little line at the
> bottom where they type 
> their search terms, it isn't as obvious and
> in-yer-face as a dialog box, 

(NB: Of course, in [x]emacs the same "editbox" serves
a miriad of purpouses, and you can't just click there
and write your search terms.  So it's not a surprise
that in emacs the search editbox isn't as obvious as a
dialog box.)

You need something more than the little edit box to
make it *visible*.  A text saying "Search for:" next
to the edit box helps a lot :)

Now, I don't think that the "Search for:" text is
enough.  IMO the "toolbar" in which the search will
lie should appear/disappear as a toolbar (you Ctrl+F,
and a little panel appears with the search stuff).

It should be more like the right panel that you have
in MS Word (but probably at top).

A little animation to make the toolbar
appear/disappear and no user will miss it.

> and the dialog box approach doesn't require you to
> totally mangle your 
> existing UI layout in order to fit a search box
> somewhere (which causes 
> confusion, disturbs the peace, and isn't as easy to
> code).

it's not a 2 minutes addition, but neither a difficult
problem.  I don't think that "The isn't as easy to
code" point holds, specially if you compare it to a
fullfledged search/replace dialog box, which moves and
dances as you search like the ms word one.

> Also, I don't like the way you highlight all matches
> in addition to the 
> current match by changing the color.  It's too hard
> to tell that only 
> ONE of them is the "current" match -- and what it
> means to be the 
> "current" match.

That should be because there is no "current" match.

What do you mean by "it's too hard to tell..."?  It's
not hard, it's impossible!

> I have my XEmacs set up so that the primary match
> gets a new background 
> color, and all secondary matches get a new
> foreground color + underline. 
>   A screenshot of my setup is at
> 
> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~toomim/xemacsmatch.png
> 
> It's also a scary thing to remove the menubar and
> toolbar.  How do you 
> exit from the search?

uh?  I was not suggesting to remove the menubar and
the toolbar.  The screenshot that I showed is nothing
more than a GtkTextView with the strictly necessary
things to show the idea.  It's not mean to be a real
editor or anything.

In particular, I paid no attention to:

* The choice of colors
* The position of the search/replace widgets
* anything beyond the search part

> I generally like having bars with the scrollbar, but
> it looks a little 
> messy in the screenshot you gave.  You might want to

I guess that it's because there are a lot of matches
:)

> consider adding a 
> right-hand side margin to put those lines in (like
> Eclipse does) so that 
> they don't get in the way of the scrollbar.

I considered it.  I coded an alternative
implementation because I though that it will be a bit
disturbing to have all that in the scrollbar.

After using it, I found that it was actually more
disturbing to show the matches out of the scrollbar. 
When I wanted to scroll to a particular match I was
using my mouse in the scrollbar and looking at the
"matches" bar to see where to go... so why don't put
both things in the same place?

Cheers,


=====
Joaquin Cuenca Abela
e98cuenc at yahoo dot com

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com



[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]