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Rules for Autocomplete

jeremymikkola.com

41–50 of 151 posts

Re: Rules for Autocomplete

#41
post #20

> If an option is highlighted, never change it, even if new data is loaded. I'd change this to "never change the positions of already visible elements when the person is not typing". Typing something, then trying to click/tap on a result that disappears and gets replaced by something else is infuriating.

Spotlight in macOS is terrible when it comes to this sort of thing, and it's been that way forever. I can't count how many times I've tried to launch an app with Spotlight only to realize that macOS has conveniently replaced the highlighted top hit (that I wanted) with something else between the time my brain said "go" and my pinky hit "return".

Has anyone ever wanted ‘Terminal notifier’ as an option above ‘Terminal’. I think the OS is laughing at me when the little notification pops up.

Edit: my solution has been to rename apps, thereby fixing Spotlight. Every update breaks this though.

Re: Rules for Autocomplete

#42
post #10

Great list. Easy to follow. I will be using this next time i write an auto complete My only objection would be > Autocompletion to the nearest ambiguous prefix. If I type “g” and that matches both “Google” and “GoodReads”, this operation would fill in the two “o”s, allowing me to then type either “g” or “d” to select the option I want. Dont change the input as i am typing otherwise you qill get 4 o's. Show it as an o…

I think I have seen this implemented before and when it inserts the extra 'oo' it automatically ignores extra 'o's that might be typed. It allows for users to actually type Google, but also allows users to type 'Ggle' and get the same response.

That's horrible. What if you want to type 'Ggle'?

Re: Rules for Autocomplete

#43
The matching should probably be case insensitive unless there are two options that differ only by case. In that case (pun intended), prefer the one that more closely matches the user’s input.

I find "smart case" is a nice solution here. The filtering should only be case-sensitive if the input has an uppercase letter.

Re: Rules for Autocomplete

#46

So, here is the thing. Modern browsers (at least Firefox and Chromium, haven't tried the others in a while) have AWESOME autocomplete widgets for their URL bars. They incorporate multiple data sources (URLs and page titles from history, bookmarks, the search engine's keyword autocompletion, probably more), build statistical models (when I start typing "y" I want to go to Youtube 95% of the time, so suggest that first…

[deleted]

Re: Rules for Autocomplete

#48

So, here is the thing. Modern browsers (at least Firefox and Chromium, haven't tried the others in a while) have AWESOME autocomplete widgets for their URL bars. They incorporate multiple data sources (URLs and page titles from history, bookmarks, the search engine's keyword autocompletion, probably more), build statistical models (when I start typing "y" I want to go to Youtube 95% of the time, so suggest that first…

I agree, Firefox's Awesome Bar is the single best implementation of combining local and web results I have ever used. You can even set local results to appear at the top so the order of items doesn't jump around once the Google results are loaded and populated in the dropdown.

Re: Rules for Autocomplete

#50

Great list. Easy to follow. I will be using this next time i write an auto complete My only objection would be > Autocompletion to the nearest ambiguous prefix. If I type “g” and that matches both “Google” and “GoodReads”, this operation would fill in the two “o”s, allowing me to then type either “g” or “d” to select the option I want. Dont change the input as i am typing otherwise you qill get 4 o's. Show it as an o…

You could type G, "oo" gets appended but selected so right arrow validates the suggestion, and continuing typing overwrites the suggestion and the second "o" is appended again if you type "o". Then "gle" is appended because it is more frequent but if you type "d" "gle" is replaced by "dread", with " read selected"

Firefox does that in the address bar.

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