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

[Máirín Duffy <duffy rpi edu>]

On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 14:57 +0200, Julien Olivier wrote:
> Maybe a better solution could be to show "Search for 'penny lane' found
> no results, press _here_ to clear the search"...

This is a great idea. What do you think of taking it a step further and
perhaps above the track listings where the search results appear, have a
sentence telling you what you are currently viewing, ie:

Search  [walrus]


Genre   Artist           Album
[    ]  [ The Beatles ]  [      ]

The following are tracks in your collection by the artist "The Beatles"
that contain the term "walrus:"

Track  Title etc.
[ "I am the Walrus"  The Beatles ]


When you are viewing all, it could just say "The following are all of
the tracks in your collection:" 


Maybe overkill? I think it might make what you're actually looking at
clearer (although I'm not sure how many users would want to take the
time to read it? But 

-it's short enough that you can glance at it. It may be less of a
cognitive load to read a sentence than to parse all of the selection
boxes and come up with that sentence in your head if that makes sense.)
-It also shouldn't take up that much space. 
-It may be a better solution than Julien's very good suggestion of
having a drop-down so users could pick "search from album/artist/all"
because users may get the impression that you couldn't search for
example, for all songs by Phish in a "live music" genre, using two
filters at the same time.

I feel strongly that the functionality of the search box doesn't have to be
impaired, especially because I feel that there are solutions for making
the state of the track listing window clearer to the user to clear up
the search box "no results" confusion. 

~M��