I really do think that list boxes should have a filter textbox by default, as a part of the UI component.
I’m quite surprised to find it wasn’t in the Ribbon. Though I have found that a lot of the time if you are trying to find something not in the Ribbon it’s because it is in a dialog box (under the Office, and thus in the new Office).
The web has shown how searchable applications can improve usability. It has also illustrated some common patterns and limitations as well.
For instance, searching works well with Word because the features all act on the same data. The main mode is working within the Word application window.
For other classes of business applications, there are many different screens, each for a kind of data (invoices, customer info). For a customer window, you might have to locate the “search customer form”, and then pick from a list of customers. You have to constrain your application to interact in a particular way for searchable apps to be built. In particular, modal windows can kill searchability, since even if you know which window it is, you don’t know how to navigate the application in order to arrive at that window.
Incremental search is great… if you know what you are looking for. Problems arise when the search only looks for exact matches to the word of phrase you are typing.
If you search for ‘picture’ then everything related to ‘picture’ should be show, including ‘image’.
The downside of this is that the search result becomes larger: you get more hits. Also its harder to implement: its a more complicated search algorithm.
On the other hand, if you write something that isn’t exactly a match, you get results that could be exactly what you wanted, you just didn’t know the exact term, or rather use the word ‘picture’ instead of ‘image’.
I have not used Office 2007, but it is weird they removed such a useful feature.
I could like to see it in 3D Modelers (Blender, Maya, 3D Studio, etc) they have tons of options and it is hard to the thing you want to use.
I don’t know. A while ago there was an article on this site about the (large) number of steps that people use to be productive with software. This just seems to be adding to the excessive amount of work that we’re already doing.
To use this feature, I have to:
Click on search area to give it key focus.
Type one letter and see results.
Type second letter and see results.
Type third letter and see results.
Hopefully by this point I’ll have found what I want.
This means that in an ideal case, in order to do something I have to now add the above steps to the process of doing that something.
Of course the words that I use to describe this universe is different from everybody else’s so I never successfully search the first time around. In the end I’d have to do a couple of loops of hit and miss searching to find a function - and that’s if I find what I’m looking for.
This would probably add 20-30 steps to a process when it would be much simpler just doing:
Launch web browser. (The default page is Google.)
Type the application and a quick description of problem.
Press return.
Scan results.
Open the 2nd or 3rd result.
Read answer.
In the end this is what most of us do when we can’t figure out how to use a piece of software. Why add more complexity to your software when Googling the problem is the easier solution? It would be best to remove this searching code, cut down on the application’s already complex code base, and try to make a solid application as possible.
Don’t worry about adding fluff to an application when there are superior methods available.
The problem with Microsoft Word is that features were piled in without much thought about where they should fit in the grand scheme of things. That’s why entering headers and footers is under the “View” menu instead of the “Format” menu.
The biggest advance in the latest version of Microsoft Office was the removal of about 20% of the commands that no one used, or could be done in other ways. The ribbon is a neat idea, but I don’t believe it will replace the menu bar because (get ready for this!) IT DOESN"T SCALE WELL!
Yup, that’s right. That’s why there are commands that are not on the ribbon. They simply didn’t have the realestate to place these commands on the ribbon. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons why Microsoft finally cleaned up the commands in Word: There were too many commands to fit in a ribbon.
So, where does the ribbon get you? Well, now instead of flipping through the menus to find the command you want. (Which takes a single mouse stroke), you have to cycle through the ribbon by doing point-click-point-click-point-click. Even worse, you’ve got to interpret the 32 x 32 bit icons on that ribbon. (What in the heck does the “Insert Table-of-Contents” icon look like?).
Maybe I’m an old curmudgeon who never likes the latest technology. (World-Wide-Web? What’s wrong with Gopher? All this GUI this and GUI that. Real programmers use Curses and write their applications in a combination of C and assembler). However, each “ribbon” can be thought of as a menu, and each item on the ribbon can be thought of as a command on that menu. So, you now have a half dozen menus, each with about a dozen or two menu items, with no sub-menus. Sounds good to me.
Apple takes a rather interesting approach to applications. Eliminate features that no one really wanted and make the application preform better. Look at the iPod. Why did that become a breakout appliance? Because it threw out all of the extra glop and concentrated on making it easy for people to use.
I like the latest release of Office, but mainly because it was reengineered and better thought out. Commands work a bit easier. But, in the end, I miss my menubar.
Opera uses incremental search to search e-mails, shortcuts custumization, web page text, history, well almost all features have that for at least 3 years…
I love incremental search, there is a post which I did recently, and I talked about Google Reader Hacks, and of its hacks I listed was the incremental search built into Google Reader which make finding specific feeds so much easier
Jef Raskin had the right idea - Either use the mouse or the keyboard not both … Don’t force the user to switch between them repeatedly
So to use menus/dialogs I have to click on them, then type, then click on the thing I wanted ? How is this easier than clicking menus/sub-menus etc …
All it seems to show is that the menus were badly layed out … It might explain why some items move on every version of Word (and now are either on the ribbon…of not)
/rant
I’ve been using incremental search in many appliations for ages, but only where it’s usefull, like in system preferences and “user” oriented packages. imho, searching in a development environment plain sucks either way; incremental or not. there is no way in hell that clicking around in a gui to set properties will ever be more efficient for me then coding them up in a decent code editor. But then, i’m a Mac user used to the delights of spotlight, and generally disgusted by the amount of completely time wasting wizards pop up during my MS filled day at work. geez guys at MS, there are people who do know what they want, get these ugly wizard basterds out of my face already!
/rant
Jeff,
I read your blog every day, and whilst I understand you have a love for ClearType, your new stylesheet makes reading your site on non-cleartype systems a rather painful experience.
Not all of us use ClearType (I have dual LCDs with different sub-pixel ordering - impossible to use ClearType in this environment).
The only way that I can now read your site comfortably is to use Opera in User Mode (i.e. Ignore your stylesheet)
Would it be possible to change your stylesheet to use a font that has not been developed specifically for ClearType rendering?
I’m going to have to second the opinion that if an incremental search is a normal part of how you find a COMMAND, either your application has too much bloat, or your menus were poorly arranged to begin with. Having used Word, I’m going to have to go with a combination of the two.
Now, having incremental search in your fast-launching help window to learn how to find a command, that’s nice.
Incremental search is way better than no search or old-fashioned search, but for most features in a well-designed interface, you should be able to outperform it with the “human search” - ie, you know what category it should go in, and so you click on that.
I agree entirely. I hate when I have to look for several minutes for a function that I have used in a previous version of Office. Incremental search would make this much easier.
Good post Jeff, but don’t conflate search with filtering. Although similar in behaviour, they are two very different UI concepts. The Expression Designer is filtering, the Scout is searching.
The incremental-ness of the search or filter is a nice touch, but it’s only truly practical if the repository of results is local or on a low-latency network connection, which isn’t always the case. Auto-complete text boxes on the web are just above the threshold of acceptable performance; if you’re querying a database or web service over a shared DSL connection then incremntal search adds little value because it’s too sluggish to keep up with users’ demands.
Feature search, of course, is essentially always offline, so if you’ve got a complex application with more than 30 or 40 separate features, there’s no excuse not to have it. Nobody likes having to click through eight menu items and dialog buttons to find a dinky little button or checkbox.
