Making WordPress.org

Opened 3 years ago

Last modified 3 years ago

#5760 new enhancement

Add a Search Highlighter to Make Sites

Reported by: macmanx's profile macmanx Owned by:
Milestone: Priority: normal
Component: Make (Get Involved) / P2 Keywords:
Cc:

Description

Search results on Make sites can be quite intense, that's both good and bad.

There's a lot of great information to go through, especially when most posts are several-paragraph complications with short titles and even more important discussion in the comments.

However, sometimes there's enough information that one's eyes might glaze over and they may miss what they're looking for.

Adding a search highlighter will allow the searcher to focus attention as they navigate the results returned, leading to a far more efficient and productive search experience.

Change History (5)

#1 @macmanx
3 years ago

  • Summary changed from Add a Search Highlighter to Meta Sites to Add a Search Highlighter to Make Sites

whoops, fixed title from Meta -> Make

Last edited 3 years ago by macmanx (previous) (diff)

#2 @joyously
3 years ago

  • Summary changed from Add a Search Highlighter to Make Sites to Add a Search Highlighter to Meta Sites

Thanks for the ticket James!
But I disagree that it's the right solution. The problem is that there is too much information for the user to see the big picture of the search results.
I think to solve this, the search results should be shown as excerpts instead of full content, which helps on all the sites I've been on.

#3 @macmanx
3 years ago

  • Summary changed from Add a Search Highlighter to Meta Sites to Add a Search Highlighter to Make Sites

I don't think that removing data from search results is the right thing to do.

Too much happens below the fold on Make sites for that to be a viable solution.

There is indeed a lot of content to scroll through on search results, but a search highlighter will assist folks in focussing on what they're looking for.

Last edited 3 years ago by macmanx (previous) (diff)

#4 @joyously
3 years ago

What if the search results page output each entry like this?

<details >
  <summary><h2>title</h2><p>excerpt</p></summary>
 normal full content including comments
</details>

It's not a big change and it would help reduce the scrolling needed, showing the big picture with all the gory details available on the same page.
Adding highlighting would be nice too, but this would be a quick win.

#5 @jonoaldersonwp
3 years ago

The details/summary pattern has accessibility issues.

The simplest and best solution here is just to collapse the search results down to the title and excerpt, like every other search solution on every other website on the net. Best practice is well defined, and our implementation is at extreme odds with it.

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