Improvements to forums search
by Jason Doiron · in Site Feedback · 11/10/2004 (9:18 am) · 1 replies
I believe the forums are the most important resource for developers working with Torque. Well, actually, it's the fantastic, friendly, knowledgeable group of Torque developers and GG staff out there that are the real prize, but the forums are the gateway to their expertise. After reading some of the posts in this forum I can see that Rick has done a great job in the past of improving the search functionality based on user input.
Rick, I have two suggestions for further improving the forums search:
1) Provide the option to constrain your search to a specific forum.
This should be a win win for GG and for us as users. We will be able to find what we want much more quickly, and GG should notice a decline in CPU resource consumption by the search script.
2) Increase "data density" in search results.
The real problem here is the current results are bloated, for lack of a better word. "Data density" is what's important when it comes to forums search results. What the user wants to see in search results is the forum the thread is in, the thread topic, the thread author, number of posts, and the date it was last posted to. We get all of this information but in a format that, at 1280x1024 resolution, takes two pages to display 10 search results!
You do not need a line dedicated to the forum name followed by a paragraph description of the forum. Quite often you will get the same paragraph description repeated two or three times per results page. Also unneeded is the empty line before and after the "New Thread Topic" link. The "New Thread Topic" link isn't necessary either.
I suggest a layout for search results based on what you already have for displaying the threads in a forum. For example, this forum. All you would have to do is add another column for the forum name and increase the results per page to say 25 (or better yet, make it customizable). If the user wants a description of the forum or to post a new thread to the forum, they can click on the forum name which is a hyperlink to that forum.
I've done a mockup (see image below) of what I'm suggesting may be a better layout for search results. You'll be able to tell right away I'm not an art guy, but hopefully it will get the idea across.
Cheers,
Zach Stephens
Rick, I have two suggestions for further improving the forums search:
1) Provide the option to constrain your search to a specific forum.
This should be a win win for GG and for us as users. We will be able to find what we want much more quickly, and GG should notice a decline in CPU resource consumption by the search script.
2) Increase "data density" in search results.
The real problem here is the current results are bloated, for lack of a better word. "Data density" is what's important when it comes to forums search results. What the user wants to see in search results is the forum the thread is in, the thread topic, the thread author, number of posts, and the date it was last posted to. We get all of this information but in a format that, at 1280x1024 resolution, takes two pages to display 10 search results!
You do not need a line dedicated to the forum name followed by a paragraph description of the forum. Quite often you will get the same paragraph description repeated two or three times per results page. Also unneeded is the empty line before and after the "New Thread Topic" link. The "New Thread Topic" link isn't necessary either.
I suggest a layout for search results based on what you already have for displaying the threads in a forum. For example, this forum. All you would have to do is add another column for the forum name and increase the results per page to say 25 (or better yet, make it customizable). If the user wants a description of the forum or to post a new thread to the forum, they can click on the forum name which is a hyperlink to that forum.
I've done a mockup (see image below) of what I'm suggesting may be a better layout for search results. You'll be able to tell right away I'm not an art guy, but hopefully it will get the idea across.
Cheers,
Zach Stephens
Torque Owner Jason Doiron
Thanks Dan, I overlooked that. Changing the "Page Size" in my preference now gives me 5 screens to display 25 results. I still stand by my argument that this is bloated - in my mockup these 25 results could fit on one screen.
Cheers