+1 on power-user searchbar mode.
I have Safari set up in a similar way (using the excellent SfariStand
plugin) to do different things with the search bar. Granted, like
Lisa they are all domain-specific searches (IMDB, Flickr, OSAF Wiki,
Chandler Bugzilla, etc), but having a /command capability would be
very powerful and useful. The /command "special" syntax is all over
the place now, with it being used in both IRC and many online games
(e.g. World of Warcraft. There are also the "special" URLs pointed
out by Philippe.
I agree we have to avoid surprises for the user, so there should be
an affordance for that.
(eek, I used the a-word)
Reid
On Aug 14, 2006, at 21:30, Lisa Dusseault wrote:
On Aug 11, 2006, at 2:49 PM, Darshana Chhajed wrote:
Hi,
I'm worried that using the text search field as a text entry box
will be confusing.
I think, the text entry widget is not just a search bar. It is a
"command line" which can be used to perform several tasks one of
which is searching. It was being called a search bar till now
since it had no other functionality to it. So I dont think a new
UI feature would be required then.
FWIW (data point of one single user, use accordingly), I "replaced"
the search entry field in FireFox with a YubNub Web command line.
(Technically this was just making the yubnub site the default
"search engine".)
How this works for me is if I'm doing a search I type "g amelia
raitte" or some such thing and it does a google search -- g is the
command for a basic google search. If I forget the 'g' and just
type in my query, unless the first term in my search is identical
with a yubnub command, yubnub does the smart thing and does a
google search anyway. If I want something more specific than a
google search -- to jump to an RFC number, find an Internet-Draft
by author, search Technorati or jump to a thesaurus entry, I type
something like
rfc 3744
ids desruisseaux
tec sunbird
thes piquant
Of course the commands could start with a slash or something, I
could learn something simple like that trivially, but I just wanted
to explain how well it works for me to have one text entry widget
in my browser rather than two.
Lisa
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