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Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#41

grep

I am amazed that Google and grep are at the bottom of this thread. I guess they're not cool anymore, but they're two of the best examples of search UX there are.

As powerful and fast[0] grep is, it's probably because Regular Expeesssions aren't exactly user friendly

[0]: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-Aug...

Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#42
post #4

If you means something that searches for files within any directory, I think the best so far I've used was Everything ( https://www.voidtools.com/ ). Lightweight, fast, and really simple UI. I'm still looking for a Linux equivalent (I'm currently using a shell wrapper for `ag --depth 0 -g `.)

Listary is another good one for this, and it chains search results with common actions. From any explorer window or desktop you can just start typing to find stuff.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#44
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know ag and it's not a package in Debian. You're in for a treat then: the package name is "silversearcher-ag". Next time you want to grep a directory of files: instead of grepping it, pause, remember this comment, install it and then do "ag " instead. It's quite a bit faster. Well, lots faster.

faster still: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

Golang flavour https://github.com/monochromegane/the_platinum_searcher

Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#45

google ... before it became frustrating to be under total surveillance.

Google is amazing! However, to be fair, it'd be pretty hard to provide such amazing and accurate results without knowing a lot about you. Granted, I do wish they'd let you control more about what they know about you. I'm reminded of the (not surprisingly) defunct Google Desktop and how it would build an index of your file system and let you search it "fuzzily" like you can with Google Search.

Some time back Google also had a product for sale to enterprises called the Google Search Appliance or something like that. IIRC they were pushing it as a packaged solution for on-prem search. Not sure what happened to it later.

Edited to add: Searched Google for it (how meta). Found this:

https://enterprise.google.com/search/products/gsa.html

and this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance#Retire...

So it may still be available - until 2018.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#46
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know ag and it's not a package in Debian. You're in for a treat then: the package name is "silversearcher-ag". Next time you want to grep a directory of files: instead of grepping it, pause, remember this comment, install it and then do "ag " instead. It's quite a bit faster. Well, lots faster.

faster still: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#48

If we're talking ux it's how people search as well. We've got LATCH for that. Location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy. On the BBC website people might search for a 'detective' (category), but also might search for 'tomorrow, this week' (time) or 'most viewed' (hierarchy).

I've always found the search on iPlayer to be next to useless. Haven't got a specific search to demonstrate, stopped using it after I deleted flash. It's a real shame the BBC continue to use flash and recommend Adobe reader when they link to a PDF. I've emailed recommending some alternative but never heard anything back.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#49
post #25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know ag and it's not a package in Debian. You're in for a treat then: the package name is "silversearcher-ag". Next time you want to grep a directory of files: instead of grepping it, pause, remember this comment, install it and then do "ag " instead. It's quite a bit faster. Well, lots faster.

Thanks! I installed it a and aliased grep to 'echo Try ag'.

May as well alias grep to ag XD

Re: Ask HN: What's the best 'non-frustrating' search/directory UI/UX you've seen?

#50
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I installed it a and aliased grep to 'echo Try ag'.

May as well alias grep to ag XD

Thought of that, but a quick glance over ag's man page shows there are options that I commonly use with grep that work differently with ag. I don't want to mess something up so I'd rather just show myself a reminder.
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