Re: [Usability] Some usability feedback

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 09:44:14 +0100, Maurizio Colucci
<seguso forever tin it> wrote:
> Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> >Too bad he didn't try to type more letters, as it would have worked
> >the same way...
> >
> Sorry, maybe I should have specified that he didn't know the first
> letters of the file (e.g. is it "michael jackson - bad" or "bad -
> michael jackson"?). And he did not know the exact folder as well.

Oh, right. That doesn't work at the moment. And didn't realize the
search was not just for the current folder.

While we are on the subject, I think that an automatic search like
type-to-find and any other (spatial) folder-integrated search should
really search only the current folder.

For showing the results, hiding the non-matching items sounds like a
bad idea. If I type 'abd' when I really mean 'abc', it would hide the
real target. But the worst thing is that it looks like the items are
disappearing, possibly without any indication why this is happening or
a obvious way to cancel the process.

Instead, the view could be altered so that the items having exact
match could be at 100% opacity, items having partial match at 66% and
the rest at 33%. Also, since we are categorizing the items, they
should be also ordered by relevance. This would have the following
benefits:

- visual feedback of the matches
- no files are lost from the view
- sequental matches would show up
- typing errors have less effect on the results

The downsides:
- is the search engine up to it? (I have no idea)
- still no obvious cancelling
- messing around with the order of items

All in all, I think the type-to-find is probably better to stay as a
"jump-approximately-to" function instead of a full-blown search. The
devhelp style of searching would be great as the search tool
interface, though. I've found that it works beautifully.

-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi