545949 - make clickable elements in faceted search UI more obvious (less flat and html-ish, more native-looking, buttons, icons etc.)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Description

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

this is Bug 516797++  
 [faceted search] Need tooltips for facets (especially for date picker toggle)

in short, it's not obvious what's clickable ... a trivial example is "Open as list".

long form: facet search results is pretty "flat" looking, for lack of a better term. It's a clean look, which may have been a design objective, but for users who are accustomed to visual hints, buttons, etc, the UI isn't overly intuitive. It's been mentioned at my company by savvy tech people.  And it's mentioned on various fora.

tooltips will help, but so much of the screen is clickable that it's actually a lot work for a user to ferret everything out by mousing around.  And tooltips are a distraction for expert users. (see last item below)

some ideas:
- a quick start button to a first use video
- a help button that temporarily "neons"/lights up every clickable item
- iconify or make buttons of some items

not what I seek for this bug, but as an extension to Bug 516797:
- togglable tooltips ala bugzilla [1] (which I mentioned to clarkbw) which provides tooltips to those that need it, but omits them for users who DO find them annoying.  

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi?format=advanced and click "Give me some help", which gives you https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi?help=1&format=advanced

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

My whole-hearted support for Wayne's idea that faceted search results page should be more integrated into the general application layout and functionality, with native buttons, icons, and colors, and contextual menus.

I never understood why faceted search results UI comes along as a complete visual alien, compared to the rest of the application (flat html-ish with ideosyncratic colors vs. native OS buttons, icons, colors etc.). Combine this with the disfunctionality and poor design of the results page, and start to understand why I'd much rather skip the alien and proceed with good old "open as list" right away, where everything's clearly arranged, condensed, with native look and feel, and actionable. Bug 518336 seems to share that feeling.

Disfunctionality explained: The current results page is flat not only in design, but also in functionality: Due to the complete lack of contextual menus, I have no way of acting on the filtered msgs or on filter criteria like contacts or folders right away, which is inefficient as they are already in front of me with a lot of details. E.g., I'd often want to use an email contact right from the faceted search result. And on the other hand: Although I see a html-ish flat text page, I cannot even do a simple text search on that result page (which could make it at least a little more useful). Maybe I also need some more time to adapt and understand, but right now I wouldn't miss a thing if alien faceted search results page wasn't there. Gloda faceted search as such is great, but the UI integration is poor.

Maybe someone else has the time to dissect the above sentiments into actionable bugs. I've resisted that so far, it's too big a can of worms.

Comment 2

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I think this can be closed as fixed by bug 1022228.
Further improvements to this view can happen in bug 929845.
What do you think?

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #2)

I think this can be closed as fixed by bug 1022228.
Further improvements to this view can happen in bug 929845.
What do you think?

I agree. Thanks for giving this attention.