518218 - Gloda output seems not well organized

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Description

[Russell East]

The Gloda output seems fairly comprehensive, but doesn't organize it well in my opinion.

1) on an initial viewing, the output looks remarkably like HTML, but doesn't have HTML look/feel, for instance almost everything seems to be a link to something or other, but there is no visual feedback about that.  Ok, so it's something to get used to, but it means that a casual user doesn't immediately understand the output.   I'd welcome something like underlines for everything that links to stuff, even if it is a grey'd out underline, since most everything is a link

2) further to the look and feel, there are clearly sections of output, "Filter by", "People", etc, but there is little by way of visual feedback to separate these sections, other than the font of the headings.   Some line work would help to delineate these visually.

3) the result section should appear at the top.  This is the primary function of a search feature - to produce the results.  When an end-user gets familiar with the ui, they may frequently not care about the output modifying controls at all, so the results should always be at the top.   One way around this would be two have 2 columns - one for results, and one for controls that allow modification of the results.   

4) the "Show all as list" in the controls is amazingly understated -  it is rather hard to find until (once again) you get used to the UI.   I would suggest this and other similar one-click controls appear at the top of the page, or the controls column (assuming item 3 above is agreed).

5) clicking the "Show all as list" shouldn't result in a complete new tab/page.  Instead, if you take the above 2-column approach, then clicking this button would modify the output shown in the results column - ie. to be listed in rows, instead of as the "Top nn messages out of NN" as it currently is.  Subsequently clicking that button would revert to the existing format.

Comment 1

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Hi Russell.  Do you think you could provide a screenshot of a search result, I'm not sure that I understand what's happening in 3) as you describe.

Also I'd be interested in knowing how you use the "Show all as list" option.  Are you searching for a particular set of messages that you then need to delete or tag?  I'd like to understand why you change from the results list to the message list view.

Thanks!

Comment 2

[Russell East]

Attachment: what I see initially after a search - controls for selecting amongst the results

After searching, I would like to see some results, but instead, I am presented with a list of controls that select amongst the results, which are not immediately apparent

Comment 3

[Russell East]

Attachment: what I see when I go hunting for the results

Well, it doesn't take much mind-power to scroll down the page to see the results, but still...

Comment 4

[Russell East]

Attachment: What I would like to see

This is definitely imperfect, but it goes towards what I'm saying in 2 and 3.   In particular, I think the "Show all as list" and "sort by relevance date" should be something like buttons appearing on the left.

Quite likely, the left and right should be independently controlled by separate scroll bars, rather than just one scroll bar and a vertical line, but I hope you get the idea.

Comment 5

[Russell East]

(Further to comment #3)
> Well, it doesn't take much mind-power to scroll down the page to see the
> results, but still...

...but still, in a search query that results in many hits, I have to scroll way, way down the page to see the search results.   The example above was somewhat "cooked" to make it easier to get the screenshots.

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Please can you revert to the default theme or safe mode - it looks like your theme has not been updated for the new search items. The search tab should look similar to what is shown in this blog post:

http://ccgi.standard8.plus.com/blog/archives/270

Comment 7

[Russell East]

Well, that takes "instant gratification" to new heights!

Still, "Show all as list" is in an odd place to my way of thinking.

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Well, that takes "instant gratification" to new heights!

Excellent, I take it that it is working nicely now. You can contact the theme author to ask them to update the theme or wait for them to do it.

> Still, "Show all as list" is in an odd place to my way of thinking.

Please can you file a new bug for that? As the main part of this bug is due to the theme issue I'm resolving this as invalid and it'll be clearer if show all as list is in a new bug.

Comment 9

[Russell East]

Attachment: what I would like to see - "Show all as list" as button

Would be nice to have the "Show all as list" as a button on the left.
Click it, to get the next screen shot

Comment 10

[Russell East]

Attachment: what I would like to see - result of clicking "Show all as list"

Comment 11

[Russell East]

Ah oops, filing as new bug....