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Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

swurl.com

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Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#181

Post by ryes »

kloud wrote: post #73
ryes wrote: post #2

Would love any feedback you have :)

Congrats, this looks great! I think on the desktop the columns could be wider, so the preview text wraps on fewer lines and more results fit in vertically for quick eye scanning. Did you think about having the ability to display multiple primary search engines besides Google like DuckDuckGo? A while ago I switched to DDG as my default search engine and learned to trust that the search results are good enough. On occa…

Thank you for the great feedback!

I would love to have a different search source, but DuckDuckGo and Brave don't give API access to their results. I would definitely add those if they opened up access to Swurl. Know anyone that could help me with that?

Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#182

Post by skilled »

I suppose it's my personal bias (I like minimal & clear layouts), but this current UI you got going on feels claustrophobic at best.

Since you're committing to a horizontal scrollbar, why not increase the size of columns and position the content so it feels like I am reading/looking _down_ (from top to bottom) not everywhere all at once.

Also, a better scrollbar design would be nice + individually making sure each column can be understood where it is from. In other words, some kind of a heading indicator. (You already use Icon + Source name but I feel it isn't enough.)

Maybe you already got all this planned out and you're busy with the algorithm stuff instead, if that is the case - sorry.

Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#183

Post by ryes »

lemper wrote: post #58

i guess it doesn't work on my side. it only shows search bar, side bar, and that's it. i use firefox on windows 10 if that matters.

Odd, I just tested it and it worked fine. What version of FF are you using?

Are you using some incognito or private mode?

Thank you!

Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#184

Post by Kelone »

idk1 wrote: post #84

Well that is shockingly good! I was not expecting somthing so good. Nice job! I would ask for one thing - the ability to turn off certain sources. Instagram is not of, and never will be of interest to me. Edit: 2nd suggestion / feature request: add ability to 'pin' columns to a position. 3rd suggestion / feature request: ability to add scoped google columns, I would love a column that has `site:stackoverflow.com` pre…

If sources selection and pinning to a specific column becomes a thing, I can see myself using it instead of google. It's great!

Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#185

Post by ryes »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #66

It gives me a long-forgotten feeling of a newspaper :-)

Haha, yes exactly. That is one of the design inspirations. If people can handle columns of dense content on newspapers, figured they could on search too? I hope so.

Thank you for noticing and commenting that!

Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#186

Post by ryes »

tomschwiha wrote: post #61
ryes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, sorry about that. I will add that, thank you! I just threw on GA so I can see some basic usage data.

Thank you. Otherwise great idea to have some horizontal view on different topics :) The idea behind that can probably also be applied to internal search results where you need to gain quick insights into multiple topics related to one keyword.

Thank you for the encouragement!

Yes the UX could be used for other search apps. Internal search is a good one, maybe searching a bunch different doc types or internal databases. Good point!

Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#187

Post by ryes »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #63
ryes wrote: post #2

Would love any feedback you have :)

Neat. Search UX is at the same time extremely difficult and criminally under-explored I feel. I realize this is hard with third party data, but something I'm really interested in presenting the relationships between data, and offering means of exploring them. One gripe with this design is that this page can't be scrolled on a PC. Or rather, it can only be scrolled vertically. To scroll horizontally, you need to grab…

Thank you for the detailed feedback marginalia_nu!

Yes I agree search UX has not been evolving much. I wish it would.

What version of Windows and what browser are you using? How old is the computer? Maybe it is something I could improve. I was figuring most modern computers can scroll horizontally well, but that isn't always the case. But I guess I am trying to push the design into the future...

Re: Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time

#188

Post by ricardo81 »

ryes wrote: post #159
etrautmann wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, fully agree that source selection would be huge here

Is there some specific other sources you would like me to add? Could totally do it quickly if it would be helpful for everyone. Right now I'm thinking about the pinning and ability to add any site. Kind of tricky to implement design vs simplicity wise.

Good overview of search alternatives here https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...
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