[Design] Re: [Chandler-dev] Suggestions on Quick Item Entry in the Search bar

[Lisa Dusseault]

On Aug 11, 2006, at 2:49 PM, Darshana Chhajed wrote:

> Hi,
>
>> I'm worried that using the text search field as a text entry box  
>> will be confusing.
>
> I think, the text entry widget is not just a search bar. It is a  
> "command line" which can be used to perform several tasks one of  
> which is searching.  It was being called a search bar till now  
> since it had no other functionality to it. So I dont think a new UI  
> feature would be required then.

FWIW (data point of one single user, use accordingly), I "replaced"  
the search entry field in FireFox with a YubNub Web command line.   
(Technically this was just making the yubnub site the default "search  
engine".)

How this works for me is if I'm doing a search I type "g amelia  
raitte" or some such thing and it does a google search -- g is the  
command for a basic google search.  If I forget the 'g' and just type  
in my query, unless the first term in my search is identical with a  
yubnub command, yubnub does the smart thing and does a google search  
anyway.  If I want something more specific than a google search -- to  
jump to an RFC number, find an Internet-Draft by author, search  
Technorati or jump to a thesaurus entry, I type something like
	rfc 3744
	ids desruisseaux
	tec sunbird
	thes piquant

Of course the commands could start with a slash or something, I could  
learn something simple like that trivially, but I just wanted to  
explain how well it works for me to have one text entry widget in my  
browser rather than two.

Lisa