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Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

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Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#161

Post by jerf »

rudian wrote: post #113
tobr wrote: post #50

A similar problem I’ve ran into both in tech support and user studies is momentary blindness for the scope of search. For example on your Mac, you have Spotlight, Finder search, Google search, help menu search, and various application-specific or website-specific search fields. In my experience if two of those are on screen at the same time, it’s very easy to get confused about which one to use to get which type of r…

Other than "momentary" blindness, it feels like some people don't look at their monitors three-dimensionally: It's just buttons and fields everywhere, there's no physical separation between them, there's no hierarchy. They just learn to operate some UIs mechanically and don't put any thought into it. That's why they whine when something moves; As far as they're concerned, that something disappeared into an alternate…

I think it's really easy for programmers to overestimate how much screen parsing everyone else is doing.

I've often joked that one of the core skills of a programmer is to be able to look at a terminal scrolling a full screen of text every quarter of a second or so, and extract useful information from it. I've lost track of the times I've seen something "different" and had to scroll up dozens of screens to find what I happened to see.

This is a job-specific skill like a mechanic diagnosing a complicated machine's problem from the particular way a single knocking sound sounded, or a doctor glancing at you and telling you you have some obscure disease that you've never heard of because you have some particular droop in your eyelids. This is not the way the non-programming public perceives a computer screen.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#163

Post by MauranKilom »

klyrs wrote: post #159
cletus wrote: post #145

This is a good example of making the mistake of conflating implementation details and user interface design. Firefox always had two boxes: URL bar and search. One of the big changes Chrome made when it was born was to have the Omnibar, being of course one bar that does both. If you think about this as an engineer, Firefox's design decision makes sense. You don't want to accidentally leak things to a search engine. UR…

Firefox did away with the search bar a long time ago. For a while, it was possible to bring it back through about:config, but I don't think it's possible to make the url bar a clean url bar anymore (this is an invitation for corrections). It's annoying because I navigate to pages via URLs, and all I don't want to send those to a search engine for "suggestions" (though, a locally-indexed history is nice). All too ofte…

> Firefox did away with the search bar a long time ago. For a while, it was possible to bring it back through about:config

The search bar still exists in Firefox if you want it to btw. I use it daily.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#164

Post by jabroni_salad »

londons_explore wrote: post #29
phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

In the 1980's, taking away the 'choke' lever which assisted starting a car was seen by some as removing a critical control. Yet automatic chokes became standard, and today's drivers usually don't even know or care what a choke even is. Todays people have other things to spend their time learning. People of tomorrow may not need to know or care what the difference is between a search box and a URL bar. All they know i…

That is true about the choke, but I bet we could [and this is not an invitation, go away keyboard warriors] start a raging inferno in the comments right now about manual vs automatic transmissions.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#165

Post by stayux »

Long time ago (2006) I had a client who wanted their educational web-site (Provider of e-signature) to be created with user centric design first approach.

I had a vast interest in the topic due to my exposure to Nielsen Norman Group teachings and research based UX. In one of the test I introduced a big search field positioned in the top of the screen with clear contrast as a starting UX point.

The test failed miserably. People rejected the notion that they must type, mostly of _fear_ of making a mistake.

As a result all the data suggested that the targeted audience will feel comfortable with "precompiled" list of important topics as a UX starting point. After carefully creating adequate structure I introduced 9 starting points and solved the problem. /Warning: Cyrillic / Retro UI/ (https://web.archive.org/web/20080820012158/http://www.b-trus...)

This was in the time when most of the users associated Internet with the blue "e" icon of Internet Explorer.

I think that this mindset is still present. Users in general are in the same space. Facebook icon replaced the IE icon successfully.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#166

Post by coldpie »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #156
coldpie wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree, but at the same time I find anecdotes like this comment elsewhere in this thread[1] compelling. It may be we're just wrong and there really is a better way to do it, I've certainly been wrong about plenty of other things. Dunno. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864722

> at the same time I find anecdotes like this comment elsewhere in this thread[1] compelling I don't. As I replied to that post directly, the URL bar is not like the choke lever on a car, but more like the steering wheel or navigation input. It's the UI element that is used to communicate user's goals to the machine - not some incidental control of a subsystem that gets automated away.

Google is suggesting replacing the URL entirely. URLs have real problems, which are genuinely really hard to solve. They're also designed for a subset of web content, and a lot of modern web content does not fit into the URL scheme very well. I don't know if Google's replacement will be better, but I am at least willing to hear them out once they have a proposal.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#167

Post by Mikeb85 »

bantunes wrote: post #158
Mikeb85 wrote: post #127

Am I the only one who likes the search/URL bar combined? It makes it easy to search, it searches through your bookmarks as well (giving bookmarks some priority), and auto-fills frequent website URLs quickly.

You're not in the percentage of users that has a problem with it (that I'd put in the high 70s or 80s).

I don't know anyone in real life who has a problem with it. Half of the reason Chrome beat Firefox is that Firefox had search in a separate bar and it was unergonomic to use.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#168

Post by denton-scratch »

coldpie wrote: post #41
dylan604 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always perplexed me. The fact that so many people use a search engine for new windows/tabs combined with browsers shrinking the URL bar to near non-existence makes this an obvious thing people will do though. Reminds me of the old AOL keywords. It's all about getting those precious analytics. If the users go to a website directly from typing a URL, 3rd parties loose those metrics.

Google is actively trying to kill the URL[1]. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, but it is a goal of theirs to fundamentally change or eliminate the URL entry bar, yes. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-chrome-ends-i...

URLs are awful; I think they are a bodge. I think the same about domain names, and the whole DNS system.

I mean, I think the DNS was a brilliant invention; it saved you having to memorise the IP address of every site you visited. But talking someone through entering a URL over the phone is a bit like fixing printer problems remotely; it feels like the early '80s.

But I'd prefer real URL bars, rather than a field that doesn't know whether you're entering a URL or search-terms.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#169

Post by azernik »

oAlbe wrote: post #150
rudian wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than "momentary" blindness, it feels like some people don't look at their monitors three-dimensionally: It's just buttons and fields everywhere, there's no physical separation between them, there's no hierarchy. They just learn to operate some UIs mechanically and don't put any thought into it. That's why they whine when something moves; As far as they're concerned, that something disappeared into an alternate…

> three-dimensionally I had actually never put it into words before now, but that makes a lot of sense, and it actually accurately describes how I see my screen. To me, the OS taskbar is "higher" (as in, closer to me) than the application window title bar, which in turn is higher than whatever controls are in the application itself (think Firefox back and forward buttons, URL bar, setting menu etc), which is itself h…

Huh. I have that experience, but in reverse. More "specific" or application/context-specific UI elements feel "closer" to me, while browser chrome is farther in the background, and OS all the way in the back. I believe that's the visual paradigm most graphical OS's going back to the '90s used.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#170

Post by klyrs »

MauranKilom wrote: post #163
klyrs wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox did away with the search bar a long time ago. For a while, it was possible to bring it back through about:config, but I don't think it's possible to make the url bar a clean url bar anymore (this is an invitation for corrections). It's annoying because I navigate to pages via URLs, and all I don't want to send those to a search engine for "suggestions" (though, a locally-indexed history is nice). All too ofte…

> Firefox did away with the search bar a long time ago. For a while, it was possible to bring it back through about:config The search bar still exists in Firefox if you want it to btw. I use it daily.

My mistake, I meant to say url bar. Last time I tried this, the url bar had all the functionality of the search bar, which misses the point. Am I remembering wrong?
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