Re: [Usability] search is not easy to find aka "a few minutes with gnome virgins"

["Michael Gilbert" <michael s gilbert gmail com>]

hello Matthew, thank you for looking further into these issues.

On 6/9/06, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Hardly surprising: a file search definitely isn't a "place". It's not
> an application either, but at least "Applications" looks vaguely like a
> Start menu.

the best solution is probably an item called something like "File
Finder" placed in either "Applications" or "Applications -> System
Tools."  my gut tells me system tools is better, but that menu is
already quite cluttered.

> The default should be to  search everything you can access, just like in
> Web search engines,

agreed.

> Fortunately the dialog doesn't use the inscrutable "/" terminology, but
> "File System" isn't much better, and the icon for it seems to be a
> harmonica. Unfortunately there isn't really any good name for
> "collection of obscurely-named things that has your files hidden in it
> somewhere, and your programs in it spread across several other places,
> but which can't be called your hard disk because it has your other
> drives hidden inside it too".

i think that "All Files" is a more intuitive description for "/" than
"File System," and encompasses the needs of your above description.

> This is a bug in that while the Find tool tells you "No files found",
> it does not mention what it was searching for, so there is no way to
> distinguish between a search that has finished with no results and one
> that hasn't started yet.

note that if one has done a search the dialog will say "No files
found" even if the user begins typing a different search term.  at
this point the software is lying because it doesn't know whether or
not there are no files matching the new term.  it would be better for
the "No files found" feedback to disappear the moment the user
modifies the search term or changes any item in the dialog.

> Thanks for your interesting report.

you're quite welcome.  i'm glad to do my part to help make software
better.  have a nice day.

mike