Advanced search page needs some ❤

Most input boxes have different heights and widths. It is not very nice to see.

In the image below it is not clear how the voices were divided. “Only return topics/posts” seems to be part of the list instead of being the title of a new section.
It is difficult to understand why three items are with a check box and others are in a dropdown menu.
Not all the items in that menu are mutually exclusive.
E.g., I cannot automatically search a topic that I read, I liked, is a wiki and include images. The only thing that I can do is a search adding the options manually.

18 Likes

@awesomerobot probably something for you list

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I did some initial cleanup to make the inputs more consistent here… but I’ve been thinking about it a bit more:

Utilizing the full width of the page could be nice

It is difficult to understand why three items are with a check box and others are in a dropdown menu.
Not all the items in that menu are mutually exclusive.
E.g., I cannot automatically search a topic that I read , I liked , is a wiki and include images . The only thing that I can do is a search adding the options manually.

This could be a good use for our new multi-select dropdown menu (for tags in the composer).

It might also help to visually separate the options that are directly related to each other

28 Likes

Awesome but what happens on mobile here, or narrow browsers.

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I :heart: everything you have proposed.

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I think medium screens could have something similar to today’s layout (this is a bit rough, but you get the idea)

Mobile could do what we do today with the dropdown, and it would be almost 1:1 to with large screen sidebar

I tried an alternative where there’s a separate focused view for advanced options, but I think there are more downsides than advantages (you might scroll a little less, but you also lose some context and have to tap an additional time).

24 Likes

Here is something I’ve wanted to mention for a while: I’d like to have a second “search” button at the bottom of the advanced options. I just can’t get used to having to go back up to submit my search, after I filled in the advanced criteria.

Anyone else with a similar experience?

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I started work on this, and I think it would totally work on tablets with the desktop layout @sam (this is with ipad dimensions at 768px width) :

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How about:

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I just finished working on a first iteration of this work and asked @awesomerobot to review/improve it.

mobile

tablet

desktop

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Would the advanced search default to being on the right sidebar, even after performing a regular search? If so, I think that’s a great idea, as it would surface the incredibly advanced search options of Discourse more easily.

1 Like

Possibly, if there is xxxxtra wide width room for it, I think that’s the plan.

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Finally had some time to review and merge this today:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/bd7100a0624c7a27bc643fee45e8d8119d7bca1e

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It looks amazing :heart_eyes::exclamation:

Check it out everyone: https://meta.discourse.org/search

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Looks good, one small bit of related feedback

I feel we are rushing here with the “New Topic” button, we should display it at the bottom of the list of results. The intent there is that your search failed so go for it create a new topic, but now we don’t even ask you to read through results. This will probably also get rid of a row which balances this a bit more.

7 Likes

The selector still needs to be there though, so it won’t remove a line – I guess it will for non-staff though which is most folks?

I don’t mind New Topic being there, it only appears when you actually search which means you made the effort?

I think we could move the selector to the left of “100+ results for …”

My concern is you did not make enough of an effort cause you did not even read through all the results.

1 Like

Well maybe, but just searching alone is plenty of effort IMO. Very few folks even get that far…

Would it be worth adding it after 20 results or so like this? It’s a little bit of a barrier, but not quite the end of hundreds of possible results.

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I think it is fine where it is for now provided it only appears on search.

1 Like