Re: [Usability] Find bar variants

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, Tommi Komulainen wrote:

> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 19:25:54 +0200
> From: Tommi Komulainen <tommi komulainen iki fi>
> To: Usability <usability gnome org>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Find bar variants
>
> On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 16:53 +0100, Christian Persch wrote:
> > 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]:
>
> I assume there is some sound reasoning behind putting the find bar below
> then content rather than above it?  Something more educated than
> 'because firefox did it like that' would be nice...

I cannot tell you why but I can take a decent guess and try and provide
some insight into how it ended up like that.

My quick bit of searching turned up some comments suggesting that the Find
Bar was planned with the intent of providing a more usable interface to
Find as you type/Type ahead rather than being about removing the find
dialog.  Find as you type already presented information in the statusbar,
and this functionality looks as if it evolved from that but instead
provided an easier way to edit the search term.

The proliferation of boxes on top would also make it confusing and
cluttered to have it on top and you can already choose to use the top
search bar to search the current page (by clicking on
the icon).

I remember seeing an office program (think it might have been GoBe) that
had a search toolbar on top (GoBe definately had a spellchecker as a
toolbar).

I'd be happier with a more complicated find dialog (with a dropdown to
remember past searches) that was a little smarter about not obscuring the
text you are searching for but a Find bar is easier to implement and if it
is done consistantly at least users wont be so surprised at the lack of a
popup dialog.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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