Good morning! We had a report that a user searched for “go” and could not find anything. Or rather, that the search did not work.
Now, I’m used to forums with a 3 character minimum for search; but maybe not everyone is. I suspect that is what is going on here; however, as part of the bigger picture, I’d like to request some error reporting when the search is not going to function. Right now on these forums try searching for “go” - nothing at all happens. It’d be more user friendly if the search reported why that was (not) happening.
In fact, I’m only guessing at the “why” here. A UI element that does not respond in any way is a wee bit confusing.
Just to provide a bit more feedback. We’ve actually had that same question appear on our instance, but I wouldn’t say it appear enough times for us to report it (yet). I’m personally torn on it. I think adding more would clutter the search, unless it can be done as a “placeholder” inside the search box, such as “type X or more characters”
Your second example for ‘gox’ is what I’d expect if there are no results for any reason.
Otherwise it just looks like “nothing happened what’s going on?” - how about some user feedback so the user knows what’s going on? Putting in “go” and getting no response from the interactive box is pretty confusing. The second example is much, much less confusing.
For the “go” search why not tell the user, “you’ll need at least 3 characters to search” instead remaining dormant?
I like this! I have tried searching 2 characters… Eventually figured out I need more but it was frustrating when I was first learning to use forum software.
Perhaps, if a minimum exists or is configured that way, to include an exception for shorter words where it is explicitly that two letter word. So something like regex to indicate the end of the word (I’m thinking go$ except that’s normally the end of a line and might not work exactly). That should satisfy the obscure programmers and the strategy board gamers.
