Ask PG: Why no search box? | Hacker News Reader

Ask PG: Why no search box?

40 pointsdrp37 comments

I just saw that New Mogul has a search box that pipes through to searchyc.com without ruining the site design. I'm sure you've considered adding a search box in the past, but might now be a good time to reconsider?

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The point is that searchyc is kind of "hidden", a good percent of participants of HN don't even know their existence, maybe a redesign givin more focus to it, or enabling it use in the current design like adding it to the main page would be great. IMHO

Absolutely.

A standard emerged in websites many years back:

* logo in in the upper left (which is also a link to the home page)

* search is a text box in the upper right.

If you're not doing it this way, you're imposing an unnecessary cognitive load on your users.

I dunno, I find it to be alright. No need to expose everything to a beginning user of HN all at once. I liken it to a game mechanic that you slowly get more items and powers as you work your way through the game. That way, they learn the interface as they go.

It's kinda part of the fun, and if you stick around long enough, you 'discover' (aka level up) little things about HN that increases your skill level at using HN.

Hacker News Toolkit puts a search box on every HN page, among other things.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039

Maybe it's an intentional flaw to keep people from those "other" sites from flocking here? I'm not 100% serious but sometimes I wonder if in certain cases, ease of usability hinders the maintenance of a community because the barrier to entry is really low?

There is a lot of data on this site, and a few months ago, PG had to do upgrade the server to handle the traffic. If he added search, is it possible that all those queries would kill site performance?

Just put a form in the header that submits directly to searchYC; that would be good enough and would put no strain on HN.

Without an easily accessible link, it's difficult to search content on the site. I've been a member for a long time, and I didn't know that searchYC existed until reading this post (previously I had been using Google, which isn't so great at indexing HN).

HN readers are expected to know how to use Google to search a single site.

SearchYC is much better.

He could even just put the search box on the submit page with a label like "Want to check if it's already been submitted? search for it:", as a way to reduce duplicate submissions.

Why not add OpenSearch?

http://jon.ursenba.ch/code/hn-search.xml

Here's an idea. Allow searching of your "saved" items. Then people will be doubly encouraged not to upvote pointless crap.

Sounds like a job for Greasemonkey. Wouldn't be too hard to add a box that submits to searchyc.com/<your_query>

http://github.com/zacharydanger/greasemonkey-searchyc/tree/m... -- Github seems to be erroring out, but you can

  git clone git@github.com:zacharydanger/greasemonkey-searchyc.git

for a peak at a search box that hits searchyc.com

Not hard at all (see my "wunbar" comment above).

Like to see the HNsearch button (in footer) replaced by a Search box.

Deleted comment

I made "wunbar" recently, which allows you to use searchyc from your firefox toolbar (or from wunbar.com) along with many other sites (google, etc.)

i made a yubnub command http://yubnub.org/kernel/man?args=yc

And why no inbox?

He asked about it previously and people said they didn't want it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28085

I think erlanger was talking about an inbox like reddit's where it just shows replies to your comments. A messaging feature is a little different and the messages would be private like email.

that and a search would be welcome additions. messaging is kinda pointless, but the little envelope that changes color when you have a reply is a fantastic usability feature. search would also be nice but can be pretty easily done with google...

stupid me. just realized that the "threads" link does what i was looking for.

With regard to a messaging feature, it might be nice to be able to contact some people here via email (or allow yourself to be contacted) without having to reveal your email address in your profile.

Oh yeah. I'd totally like that too! (In fact, I just made a mention about how nice it would be yesterday)

Yes, this is what I was referring to.

That was 2 years ago. I would welcome messaging and search, and I think if he put it to a vote now he would be pleasantly surprised to get a different answer than he did then.

I'd rather not have messaging. Then as in now, that's what email is for. Don't need another place to check for messages.

As for search, even though it's another step, searchyc.com does a good enough job. maybe all pg needs is a form with an api to searchyc.

I think redirecting to searchyc.com/search+terms+here is all that he would need to do.

Good coders code, great - reuse. =)

OK, OK =)

  cooper@ubuntu:~/arc3$ grep -r -i search *
  strings.arc:; http://jrgraphix.net/research/unicode_blocks.php?block=1
  cooper@ubuntu:~/arc3$ du -sh .
  312K	.
  cooper@ubuntu:~/arc3$

they have a different site design, to add a searchbox on the top, he'd have to redesign the header

Not a good reason. There is an important functionality already implemented well by others and all the work to do in HN is to add a small form. Why not?

My guess would be the almost Sisyphean feature request list that's still being worked through:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

Well, a cheap hack could be to add it to the footer, I mean where is the immutable law of web design that dictates all search boxes should be at the top of the page?

Personally, it's the current content of HN that interests me first and foremost (the NEW in NEWS). Putting the searchbox in the footer would emphasise this and not break the site design.

Well we sorta already have that with the HN Search on the bottom. Granted it would work better as a text box, or at least by linking to ycsearch

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