I can certainly see a design where the search field is in the toolbar
and then at the bottom of the UI there is a separate text-box that is
used for creating new items, labeling items, chat and all kinds of
commands. I could also easily imagine that users easily acclimate to
a single widget for both search and other commands.
We still have to do a fair amount of research into the command-line-
for-end-users idea to figure out how to optimize for common
workflows. For example, it may be useful to introduce a notion of
'command sequences' to help users zip through commands they often
invoke in quick succession.
Perhaps it's really just an issue of comfort. I'm okay with what we
have for Preview. I think it meets the Plausible Promise bar. Also,
on the off-chance that users DO turn out to be comfortable with a
single 'command-line' widget, it would save a lot of screen real
estate in the UI to *not* have a dedicated search widget. I'd like to
try this out and see how far we can push people before giving in to
more widgets in the UI.
Mimi
On Feb 2, 2007, at 11:41 AM, D John Anderson wrote:
So the issue isn't about multiple commands in the palette, it's
about not confusing the meaning of a search box by requiring that
you type "/search". I hoped to avoid this confusion by putting
quick entry in a different widget, one that worked even better
for quick entry than the search box, leaving search to be the
familiar search we all know and love.
I think this is the crux of the confusion. Ii don't think of the
field in the toolbar as a search field. I think of it as a
'command-line' text field where search is one of the command
options. Is it the rounded ends that are confusing the issue? We
can change it to be a square field on Mac. I don't think there's a
difference really for windows and linux.
I think a more precise explanation of the "crux of the confusion"
is that I think it's better to feature search in it's own widget,
in a familiar form that people already understand, and feature
quick entry in in a separate widget that's optimized for its features.
Putting both functions in a single widget, even if it doesn't look
like a search widget, just doesn't seem as nice to me.
John
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