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Rules for Autocomplete
131–140 of 151 posts
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right in that this example violates, "When one option is the prefix of another, put the shortest one first." But a personal peeve of mine is Apple Spotlight. When I type d-a-s it autocompletes to dash.app, as soon as I type d-a-s-h it autocompletes to dashboard.app. Since it's built-in I felt limited in what I could do about it. Thanks to this post I looked up how to suppress it from Spotlight since I dont use…
you might like this - https://www.alfredapp.com/ - replaces spotlight, is faster, and fuzzy search seems better
I'll check it out again. I only use the most basic functionality of launching apps (I stretched out and started using the calculator a few months ago!). Years ago I looked at what was out there and used Quicksilver, but as soon as Spotlight started working for launching apps I stopped looking for anything else.
I can't imagine anything faster than Spotlight other than the few times where it's reindexing.
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learning typos is terrible with Android autocorrect/swype on a Galaxy S8. Swype with autocorrect actually degraded over time, when I had an S1 it worked beautifully, and nowadays it frustrates me so much I end up typing words letter by letter. They actually made the app worse . Progress?
Holding down on the word in the auto compete will allow you to delete it from your dictionary.
Thanks! Didn't know that.
Another annoyance that, while not the fault of autocomplete, still bothers me: I write in either Spanish or English, frequently changing between the two. It's hard to explain, but the UX of swiping right to change the keyboards generates too much friction on my brain when I'm tired (like when commuting back from work), so I end up using the Spanish default even when writing in English. Therefore, poor autocomplete is fast becoming bilingual. So when I want to write Spanish, it suggests me English words and viceversa.
I'm not blaming autocomplete here; it's clearly my usage pattern that's difficult. But at the same time, this is how I use my phone, so there's a problem to be solved here, and it doesn't involve me changing my habits :)
Every time I hit this problem I end up cursing and typing the word letter by letter, instead of changing the keyboard config. There's probably some valuable psychological insight there!
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#134A few good guidelines, but the author states this as generic autocomplete 'rules', and I feel a lot of bias and assumptions coming from programming and terminal contexts. > If there are no subsequence/substring matches, it can optionally fall back to approximate matches. This is rarely necessary to provide Supporting proximity matches is critical for anything dealing with city names, landmarks, events, person or comm…
>This is countered by a few other of his own rules, such as 'prefix matches come first', 'exact matches come first'. Again, in some applications the best behaviour might be sorting by distance, recent use, relevance, popularity, ratings. Sorting is entirely domain-specific.
I read the list as being ordered by priority. Each of the items above "should be sorted alphabetically" defines a group, and within each group items should be sorted alphabetically.
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#135One rule I always consider important: > If I type the next letter of the top match, it should remain the top match. I find these types of inductive rules might be a better way to express how autocomplete should work (given a limited universe of suggestions).
Mac Spotlight Search doesn't follow this rule and it's sooooo annoying. I have Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition both installed and the top search suggestion seems to randomly switch back and forth between the two depending on how many letters of "firefox" I type. Trying to switch to 1Password is somehow even more irritating. Typing "1p" reasonably suggests 1Password. If I continue typing "1pa", however, I'm give…
The Windows 10 start menu does the same thing. As I type "Visual Studio", the selection changes seemingly at random between Visual Studio, VSCode and the Visual Studio Installer. Infuriatingly, it seems to prefer the installer, which is never the one I want and AFAIK it's not possible to remove an item from the search results without uninstalling the application completely.
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'?
I think this type of Autocomplete only works on fixed lists. You're right, it would be completely annoying if it were a free text field with autocomplete suggestions...
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#137Here's two autocomplete mistakes that really irritate me: - Autocomplete on enter: Chrome does this, if I type in https://example.com (enter), it makes the mistake of autocompleting to https://example.com/some_page_I_visited_yesterday - Arguing: Some applications that I use have autocomplete spell checkers that continue to aggressively try to "correct" technical terms, uncommon names, or company jargon that's not kno…
Learning typos is terrible with Android autocorrect/swype on a Galaxy S8. Swype with autocorrect actually degraded over time, when I had an S1 it worked beautifully, and nowadays it frustrates me so much I end up typing words letter by letter. They actually made the app worse . Progress?
I'm exactly the same! It used to work first time, every time. Now I have to re-do every other word, so I just have to type it out. I know you can make it forget words, but it takes even longer.
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#138Particularly twitter is a huge sinner in regards to autocomplete. When searching, autocomplete for profiles comes much faster than the autocomplete for search terms. Often bad timing makes me hover a profile and then right when I click the search terms autocomplete finishes and changes the data underneath me.
Came here to mention this also. I have a 200meg internet connection, and this get's me every time. I wonder how bad it is on a slow connection?
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#139Here's two autocomplete mistakes that really irritate me: - Autocomplete on enter: Chrome does this, if I type in https://example.com (enter), it makes the mistake of autocompleting to https://example.com/some_page_I_visited_yesterday - Arguing: Some applications that I use have autocomplete spell checkers that continue to aggressively try to "correct" technical terms, uncommon names, or company jargon that's not kno…
The first also happens with ivy in Emacs, and makes it harder for me to create a new file from within Emacs in a directory with a different file with a similar name. Very infuriating.
Re: Rules for Autocomplete
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The article mentions this being on some activation like tab or similar like bash uses. Automatic completion could work with two levels of highlighting. Example with []/{} showing active/suggestive: "[G]" Then things like Chrome's url bar will fill in the complete first suggestion with a way to clear it which gives UX like: "[G]"
Usually I've seen right arrow as the activation key.