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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

#281
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I was viewing from a Windows machine (Chrome), and I haven't checked it on my Mac yet. I will try and do it on the weekend if I remember or have the time. I honestly think there's a lot you can do on the UI side, especially if you plan on having people commit to using this engine on a daily basis.

Cool, ya let me know if it looks better for you on Mac. Ya that is the problem on Windows, especially older Windows machines. I think there is a setting on Windows to make the scrollbars work more like Mac on Chrome? Yes will be trying to improve the UI more. Please try it more this weekend and let me know any more advice you have!

I'm a bit out practice with these things but look into ::-webkit-scrollbar for styling, maybe it works out.

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

#282
post #181
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I was so excited I didn't think it through :) This is where wishes meet hard reality. I believe DDG has its own crawler. But they also rely on results from Bing for which they probably don't have rights to provide an API.

So at this point the only viable alternative would seem to be the Bing API.

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

#283
This is amazing! I'd love the ability to reorder and resize search results (e.g. having Wikipedia always be on the left, then two columns of Google, etc. you get the idea.

Very inspiring to see something as old as search engine UX being rethought and redesigned, congrats!

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

#284
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a picky user, I would like to have the option to remove a box of any website. E.g. I don't like youtube thumbnails (and don't think of youtube as a good resource), so it would be nice to have the option to remove it. As for implementation, it should be easy to allow users to remove any boxes, right? PS : As for the clickable round circles, if there is a list with some black circles and others white, it just feels…

Thank you for the info! I did just add disabling Instagram and Twitter, does that help you? You can set it in the dropdown menu on the top right. Do you think I should add Youtube? Youtube is pretty popular with most people. Ahhh, yes. I understand what you mean with the black circles looking at it that way.... I was thinking it would be ok since iOS calendar has black circles as primary. I did remove the circle bord…

does that help you?

Yes, thanks!

Do you think I should add Youtube?

No, you are right, youtube is very popular.

As for the circles, honestly, I don't know. Since nobody else mentioned it, it could be that only I have that problem. And in that scenario, you can safely ignore it. If more people complain, maybe they will have the perfect solution.

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

#285
post #259
post #113

What a positive surprise, I wasn't expecting something like this tbh. The UX is amazing. I will use it for sure with some additional and essentials features for me at least: - Ability to add and remove some columns: I have no interest in using Instagram or Twitter in my search results and I have interest in using Stackoverflow or HN for example. - Ability to customize the width of each column for desktop: I have read…

:) happy it was a good surprise! Thank you for the nice words. Ok just added option to disable Instagram and Twitter from ▼ menu on the right of the search input. Let me know if that works good for you! Stackoverflow is there right now. Not sure how best to trigger HN, let me know if you have any suggestions on that. Probably not good to show it all the time. I did test the Google column wider for a couple of weeks,…

Nice! much better now without Instagram and Twitter (at least for me), good job!

I'm going to give the Google results column with the same width a try, maybe you are right. I think it also depends on the specific user’s screen size. In any case, I would recommend you let each user decide the width of the columns.

About ordering, yes, I was referring to manually, but I hadn’t thought in automatically mode tbh, but based on relevance it is probably best as you mention now that I think twice about it. I don’t know how easy or hard is to implement this feature the right way though, it may even depend on each user specific search habits, but it just a thought.

And regarding changes, yes, those would be the must-have, highest priority, and most valuable features you can add imo.

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

#286

Dude this is so fucking cool. I just wished it offered non-Google search engines as well! If it did I'd absolutely 100% use it daily.

logicprog, thank you! Hrmmm yes a few asked for non-google. I mean DDG uses Bing. I could use Bing too. Would you want that? I could add a switch to go between Google and Bing, but not sure why you would want that. Bing isn't as good as Google results. Let me know more about why and it would be very helpful to deciding this!

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

#287
post #277
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, thank you bckr! I appreciate your kind words. Here are instructions on how to default it on Chrome https://swurl.com/default.html

Done!

:) awesome! Thank you bckr! Be sure to email me any feedback you might have in the future through the contact us link in the About Us page.

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

#288
post #160

Broken behaviour without google tag manager. I have disabled google tag manager, but javascript excepts it. It is generally recommended way to write javascript not to expect any spying/telemetry tooling to always be loaded.

Hrmm, thank you for letting me know! Do you have any more info on how to reproduce this problem? How are you disabling it? I'm just trying to reproduce so I can try to stop any errors breaking things. Thank you!

Personally, I much prefer search engines that work without javascript enabled at all (currently using Metager). I use strict uBlock Origin settings as well as various other strict browser settings like blocking third party cookies. I'm not sure how much of that you want to try to support (or what is causing my issue - the site does not work at all for me, even after enabling javascript), but trying on Firefox with default uBlock Origin settings if you haven't would be one way to check a somewhat common setup. Oh, my issue could also be the referer related settings as mentioned below.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33259152

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

#289
post #160

Broken behaviour without google tag manager. I have disabled google tag manager, but javascript excepts it. It is generally recommended way to write javascript not to expect any spying/telemetry tooling to always be loaded.

Hrmm, thank you for letting me know! Do you have any more info on how to reproduce this problem? How are you disabling it? I'm just trying to reproduce so I can try to stop any errors breaking things. Thank you!

I use gorhill's uMatrix (author of uBlock).

uMatrix is awesome as it disables any 3rd party domains and only loads content from main domain that author controls. it also allows blocking by content type. Like iframes.

I believe some blockers designed for telemetry blocking, like ghostery or privacy badger, will come with js shims. So they will block google tag manager, but will load a replacement JS to make sure the page doesn't behave in a broken way.

uMatrix is more general purpose and does't do shims. Saying this, website should detect telemetry didn't load, and either still work, or display error saying why it can't proceed.

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

#290

It is really impressive. It's been hiding in plain sight yet not implemented that people want to search specific social media sites and we add reddit or twitter at the end of our search to get those results .

it's already a thing since forever, just a quick one from the top of my head https://www.social-searcher.com/google-social-search/?q=Paul...
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