Re: [Usability] A few ideas to improve searches in Rhythmbox

[Boris Goldowsky <boris alum mit edu>]

On Jul 26, 2004, at 5:39 AM, John Spray wrote:
> -When the song list contains no items, but there is text in the search
> box, present a message in the list box along the lines of "Search for
> 'penny lane' found no results".  This should alleviate most of the
> potential confusion about why no songs are listed, although it doesn't
> eliminate the minor annoyance when the user realises they've got to
> manually clear the search box.

I think that would be very helpful; the blank screen is quite 
uninformative. The annoyance of clearing the search box could be 
alleviated by providing a clear button so it only takes one click.  The 
clear button should be available any time there's text in the search 
box; not just when there are no search results.

I hate saying "let's do it just like this other OS", but as a user of 
both Gnome and Mac OS X, one thing I've grown to love about OS X is the 
search box that is used across applications: it is visually 
distinctive, so it doesn't even require a label, and it manages to 
contain controls for adjusting the scope of the search and a clear 
button, without taking up much extra space.  (There's a screenshot at 
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/finder/).

It would be nice to think about this issue beyond rhythmbox, and 
establish some Gnome-wide consistency about how searches and their 
related controls are presented.

Bng
--
Boris Goldowsky