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

#1

Post by taphangum » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 11:35 AM UTC

I'm trying to find some inspiration for a new search engine I'm working but have found most searchable directory ui's to be very frustrating to use.

I'd love to know what you guys have seen out there. What have been some of the best examples of this type of ui that you've seen?

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

#2

Post by brudgers » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 12:31 PM UTC

A few examples of search UI?UX and an indication of their design shortcomings might provide context for answers and a starting point for discussion.

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

#3

Post by TickleSteve » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 1:25 PM UTC

Sublime text....

ctrl p, type fuzzy match, instant results.

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

#4

Post by isxek » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

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 `.)

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

#5

Post by kodisha » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

Upvoted, can't wait to hear some great comments and examples, because I too find this to be one of the most frustrating areas in my daily routine.

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

#6

Post by ivan_gammel » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

Pinterest is good as a directory of almost everything that has a picture. A lot of people in UX is using it to collect inspirational UI screenshots, diagrams etc, so it's possible that you can find something there.

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

#7

Post by mschoebel » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

Have you looked at https://uimovement.com/tag/search/ and https://uimovement.com/tag/filter/

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

#8

Post by gbog » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 2:33 PM UTC

Not sure if it counts as ui buy it is for me the only non frustrating way to search anything in my filesystem: grep and find in the terminal.

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

#9

Post by to3m » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 2:33 PM UTC

isxek wrote: 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 `.)

I've been happy with Everything, too. Everything is good because it searches by multiple substrings, so you can be precise about what you're looking for. (The much-loved fuzzy search, on the other hand, in my experience returns results that might as well be random, until you type so much of what you're looking for that you might as well have typed the whole thing.)

For searching file content I quite like Agent Ransack aka File Locator: https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack - main thing I like about it is that it's very quick and easy to see the content results from a subset of the file search results.

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

#10

Post by digitalengineer » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

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).