44816 - Search Panel in My Sidebar is confusing

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Margaret Chan]

Overview Description:  The functionality of the Search Panel is potentially
problematic.  It is very confusing to understand exactly how all the features
of the panel worked.  In the Search Panel there is a pull-down menu that seems
to limit the engines on which the user's search is performed.  Some of
these menu items do not seem to make sense.  What is "Music - Artist"?
"Shareware" and "Tech News" are not search engines in and of themselves,
so if a user selects to search within "Music - Artist" it is unclear
what/where they are searching.

Build Date & Platform Bug Found:  The above is observed in Netscape6 PR1 on
Windows as well as a later build (6/20) on Solaris.

Additional Information:  The above description is abstracted from a recent
internal HCI evaluation from Sun.  A recommendation in the evaluation says:

"It is strongly recommended that this feature receive a more thorough HCI
review and possible redesign before shipping.  This feature is confusing
and not intuitive."  

We understand that there are quite a lot of changes since the evaluation
is done.  As a result, we are only filing bugs against those
which we still see in our 6/20 build.  It's possible that some of the
problems may not be there with all the recent changes, but since our HCI has
raised an official red flag in the search area, we would like to make
sure that these issues won't be missed.  A detailed HCI evaluation can be
provided upon request.

Comment 1

[Margaret Chan]

Along with this topic, similar names such as Shareware & TechNews by CNET have
been chosen for the menu items in the Customize Search Panel and
Edit->Preferences...->Internet Search->Default search
engine pull-down menu.  Not sure if they are under the same category.  If not,
we can file separate bugs for them.

Comment 2

[Claudius Gayle]

cc'ing some people

Comment 3

[timeless]

Could this be re-evaluated after PR2? And please include the non intuitive way 
that the Advanced mode is selected in your now poisoned study ;). Thanks.

Comment 4

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Netscape nav triage team: as per Matt Fisher's pre-triage recommendation, this 
bug is nsbeta1-.

Comment 5

[Paul Chen]

Marking nsbeta1- bugs as future to get off the radar.

Comment 6

[Blake Ross]

--> UI Design, but we have plenty of bugs on this area.

Comment 7

[german]

fyi - the new Search UI spec being implemented for Mojo can be found at 
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/communicator/browser/search/
A section there deals with a proposed simplification of the sidebar search 
panel. Matt Fisher ([e-mail]) is working on the engineering part of 
that area (cc'd)

Comment 8

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

> we have plenty of bugs on this area.

Do we have a general `Search UI is horked' meta-bug?

It looks like German's `mojo' design makes some good improvements to the 
sidebar panel, but it retains the most critical problems with the current UI -- 
the existence of the `Search' menu, the `Search' button that doesn't know 
whether it's noun-verb or verb-noun, and the XUL format of the sidebar panel.

Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

The issues mentioned in the original report are no longer relevant, at least in
Mozilla builds. Closing as WORKSFORME.

Gerv