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#4 search vs. filter functionality
I was using pwman the other day and I thought, 'man, wouldn't it be great to have search functionality?'. So then I lookied through the cvs log for pwman, specifically under 'filter.c' and found there is some support for the concept of filtering entries, but it left me wondering. [1]
Are there plans to introduce search support? Currently, if I have a lot of categories and what not, filtering doesn't really help too much since it only restricts the view in the 'category' i'm currently viewing. The usage scenario is that I still have to drill down into subcategories looking for what I just filtered.
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Searching could probably be added fairly easily, and I agree it would be useful
What I'm struggling with is the UI for it. I guess you'd call up a new box, type in your critieria, and it'd search. I'm just not sure how best to present the results. Any thoughts?
Hey there gagravarr,
Displaying search results can be quite a complicated task to do well. Just ask google. ;)
For now I'd keep it simple and here's why:
I'd just present the results in a list for now. Not sorted anything, just a big messy list of stuff that matches the criteria. [1] Over time, users will suggest things and then we can adjust how things are presented per some good points. But for now, matches to the criteria can just display in a big nasty unsorted list just so we can get the functionality and start thinking about the greater issues later once we use the search functionality.
Over time, I would suggest this direction however:
* How bulletin board systems return results.
When you think about bulletin board systems, when you do searches, they generally just return stuff in a list. I like how bulletin board searches (like doing a search in a phpbb forum) display results, since they deal with all sorts of complexities but yet... search results are just presented in a list in the end.
[1] Since we don't have any result ranking built in.