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Instant. Customizable. Search. [Rate my start-up]

dashler.com

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: Instant. Customizable. Search. [Rate my start-up]

#11

Interesting concept -- It seems like it might work better as a browser plug-in though. If you want to keep it as a web site, I would make the interface (your search box, browser list, etc.) as unobtrusive as possible (remove all the daed space, try to move your entire search interface to a bar at the top or left perhaps, and create a results pane who's vertical scroll bar is flush w the right side of the screen -- th…

Great design advice. I'll experiment with that.

Re: Instant. Customizable. Search. [Rate my start-up]

#12
post #6

It might be a good idea to pre-emptively load the results from all the search engines so you don't have to wait for each one. Additionally, it should be obvious which ones get results and the ones that get poor results should be pared away. Cool idea tho. You should hire a designer -- the current UI while functional definitely has that "engineer touch" :) (Not insulting, I have the same problem!)

How could I figure out which results are good, and which are bad?

Well, you definitely might not end up at a wikipedia article, or a wolfram alpha search. Beyond that you can try to get smarter about ordering them. If, for example, there are a lot of "related searches" on google, that might mean google has worse results. Or, if Google or Yahoo's first result is Wikipedia, you should rank Wikipedia first.

Re: Instant. Customizable. Search. [Rate my start-up]

#16
I like it. But I'd like it even more if it didn't use up so much screen real estate. I have a large monitor, and keep my browser windows pretty small (around 1024x768, which a lot of sites are designed for) Which is fine, but then the window-within-a-window results get positively tiny.

Re: Instant. Customizable. Search. [Rate my start-up]

#18
post #3

Cool, I'll use it for today and come back with feedback. I suggest adding DuckDuckGo, though.

Great! I appreciate it. DDG is available... type "duck" in the filter box. You can add it to your list of providers by clicking "add" in the tools menu.

I think the UI needs attention most. I want to use it, but I want the searches to be done at once, so I can just skim across the sources. Maybe on hover-over?

It would also be good if adding a new engine were easier. The language is a bit confusing. I think there should be an explicit "add another search provider to this list".

Keep it up! I'll be checking back!

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