Re: [Usability] Find bar variants

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, Christian Persch wrote:

> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 16:53:32 +0100
> From: Christian Persch <chpe gnome org>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] Find bar variants
>
> Hi,
>
> there are now at least 3 GNOME applications which employ a firefox-style
> find bar. However, every one is doing is differently, as demonstrated in
> this screenshot [http://www.gnome.org/~chpe/find-bars.png]:
>
> - Evince:

What is Evince?  (I had never heard of it before so I'm providing links in
case I'm not the only one.)

Evince is a Gnome based Document Viewer
http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/

> - Epiphany (in the Find extension in Epiphany Extensions):

I know Epiphany is the Gnome Web Browser
http://www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/

> - Yelp (in 2.9.x):

And Yelp is the Gnome Help Browser
http://directory.fsf.org/text/doc/yelp.html

> Epiphany uses Evince's EggFindBar widget with modifications; Yelp has
> its own implementation.
>
> IMHO, all find bars in GNOME should look and behave the same way.

I agree, and I'll make some quick points but I'm going to address a
different issue first.

Find in page is not very useful compared to fully searchable help files
like Microsoft Windows provides.  I do not use the help files very often
but I find the lack of this functionality extremely annoying.  Find in
page is particularly useless because most of the documentation pages I've
used have been exteremely short.
I can understand browsers wanting to have a compact unobtrusive search
tool but it doesn't make sense to be discrete about it in a Help Browser.
Ideally Yelp would be fully searchable and have a prominant search bar
near the top.
Yelp has a much larger problem to fix.

I wouldn't normally be so critical of Yelp but with the discovery of
GnoCHM (terrible name but useful software) I am extremely tempted to
convert a load of Help files into CHM format so that they will be easily
searchable.
http://gnochm.sourceforge.net/


> So:
> - Should they have a Close button ?

The programs identified all have a Status bar and should all have a View
menu where such toolbars could be enabled and disabled.  From using the
Find toolbar in Firefox though I expect these toolbars have the same
unusual interaction model and aren't necessarily implemented as standard
toolbars.  Do these applications provide this instead of a Find Dialog?
The find bar in Firefox baffled me and was so unobtrusive I was left
wondering why the search dialog had not appeared.

If they insist on having a close button it should definately be on the
extreme right in keeping with what the most popular window managers do.

> - Should they span the whole width of the window, or exclude sidebar
> areas?

I'd tentatively say they should span the whole width like a proper
toolbar.

> - Next, Prev of Prev, Next button order?

In terms of convenience I'd expect to want to search forward using Next
more than 90 % of the time so it could be considered ergonomically better
having the Next button nearer the text entry.  I wouldn't rate the
importance of ergonomics very highly in this though, hitting return in the
text box should activate search next anyway.

So I'd say it makes more sense to go with the logical button order of
Previous then Next which is what is used everywhere else.

> - Is case sensitivity common enough to warrant a checkbox in the find
> bar?

It is not something I'd ever use, particularly not in the examples
provided.

> - Should Enter activate Next, or some other action (for example,
> activate the link if the text searched for occurs in a web page link)?

Yes.

Also Yelp should have used stock icons but it looks as though Yelp was
smart enough to use toolbar items on a toolbar instead of a row of
buttons which is really freakin' ugly.

Using F_ind is in breach of the Gnome Human interface Guidelines, as there
is a recommendation against putting mnemoncis on narrow letters like 'i'
'j' or 'l'.

I would have avoided the problem entirely by using the term Search for
this label.

> What do you think?

I hope you can fashion my crude statements into constructive criticism and
pass it on to the developers.  Good idea to bring this up early and try to
get it implemented in a standard way.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/