You know how sometimes you stumble on a solution and feel silly for not realising it earlier?
It turns out that if we move the search-context stuff into the dropdown (like it is in the search menu) and add a search icon, it solves the visual issue you’re both referring too and also solves various space issues with having the search-context suff in the header.
With results:
Incidentally, it now looks and functions very similarly to Facebook header search.
Commits:
- Plugin: Hide context until clicked && add search icon · angusmcleod/discourse-header-search@6d8418f · GitHub
- Theme: Hide context until clicked && add search icon · paviliondev/discourse-header-search-theme@2c62ed1 · GitHub
Note, the right alignment CSS has changed as a result, see the first post of this topic: