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Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

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Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#191

Post by mixmastamyk »

zorbo wrote: post #173
mixmastamyk wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try keyword search on Firefox: "a foo" to search on amazon, "g foo" google, "i foo" imdb, "m foo" google maps, "w foo" wikipedia, "u foo" urbandictionary, etc... I have more but they are not public sites.

Chrome automatically recognizes searches on sites, so that you can just type "ama[TAB]" in de URL bar, and it will give you a site-specific search straight in the URL bar (provided that "ama" auto-completes to "amazon.com" for you, naturally). This works for basically every site you've ever visited that has search functionality. It's pretty decent.

That's interesting, though I only care about a few sites, and prefer the brevity of the ff keywords.

Sounds like the two could complement each other, like aliases and completion in a shell.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#192

Post by icambron »

jules wrote: post #130
calhoun137 wrote: post #55

There is an important point to be made about the quote from the end of this article. "Thanks go to Ben Alpert for helping me understand the linear algebra / cross-product magic ...I ended up going w/ a cruder slope-based approach, mostly b/c I’ve lost all intuitive understanding of linear algebra" Let that be a wake up call to all of the programmers who continue to claim that you can "get away" with out knowing much…

In this case the slope method is better and simpler than the cross product method. def slope(p): return (p.y-oldMouse.y)/(p.x-oldMouse.x) isInRange = slope(menuBottom)

My thought too. What are the supposed advantages of using linear algebra for this problem?

Edit: my guess is divide-by-zero conditions.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#193

Post by [deleted] »

revorad wrote: post #175
ww520 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. This auto-focus to the search box misfeature absolutely ruins any page viewing navigation. For people who use up/down arrow or pgup/pgdown keys to scroll down the page (which is pretty much all laptop users), this focus stealing misfeature would frustrate them to no end. I won't go back to any site that does this.

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. Steady on, soldier. I just asked a question.

[deleted]

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#194

Post by ww520 »

revorad wrote: post #175
ww520 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. This auto-focus to the search box misfeature absolutely ruins any page viewing navigation. For people who use up/down arrow or pgup/pgdown keys to scroll down the page (which is pretty much all laptop users), this focus stealing misfeature would frustrate them to no end. I won't go back to any site that does this.

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. Steady on, soldier. I just asked a question.

Sorry. It's just a lot of websites have gone that route and it's really annoying. I didn't want Amazon to cave in to the seeming demand from users and wanted to present another view.

Judging from the up-votes it seems this resonates with a lot of people.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#195

Post by duncanj »

jchavannes wrote: post #158
glomph wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://code.google.com/p/sharex/ makes those types of gifs very easy on windows. It can also do a load of other cool stuff.

Off topic, but the Reddit post about Neox Screen using the ShareX source code and asking for donations is quite disheartening. Not that anything illegal occurred, just the level of deceitfulness. http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/17qmek/my_friend...

Once, I put a broken treadmill on the curb with a sign that said "Free." I came back a while later and it had a sign that said "$20".

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#196

Post by [deleted] »

bruceboughton wrote: post #176

It's funny to see this level of attention to detail. I've always found Amazon to be one of the worst designed websites outside of the checkout process, and not from a prettiness point of view. I'm convinced their success is purely due to a smooth checkout process, superior customer service (easy refunds, Amazon Locker, etc.) and price. Amazon never makes we want to buy anything. I only buy if I go there knowing what…

[deleted]

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#197

Post by spullara »

saraid216 wrote: post #153
MichaelApproved wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't want to capture the space key because you'll need that in search queries but the arrow keys sound like an idea for those interested in accommodating both cases.

Arrow keys and page down sound like "activate autocomplete" to me.

Before you type something? That seems odd.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#198

Post by tytung2020 »

Nycto wrote: post #43

Hey all, I'm on the team that built this. We also built the redesign that launched last year. In fact, this was part of that. The article pretty much nails our implementation. Point of fact: Our team is recruiting. If you dig UX projects like this, shoot our manager Chad an email: chaddes at amazon dot com

off topic..but does Amazon hardware department need people? I have a cool phone/tablet design..a convertible 5" phone that can turn into a 7" tablet.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#199

Post by dwoldrich »

revorad wrote: post #97
Nycto wrote: post #43

Hey all, I'm on the team that built this. We also built the redesign that launched last year. In fact, this was part of that. The article pretty much nails our implementation. Point of fact: Our team is recruiting. If you dig UX projects like this, shoot our manager Chad an email: chaddes at amazon dot com

Off-topic, but can't miss this opportunity: Please tell us why the Amazon homepage doesn't auto-focus into the search box. I think of this every single time I go to the site.

I think any forcible redirection of focus makes your page inaccessible to users with screen readers. Just setting explicit tabindex on tags really screws things up; its best for accessibility to let the natural tab order rule. Many sites actually make the first tabbable element a "skip link" that jumps past the page's header and left nav content and jumps to the first .

So this topic made me curious, were does the first tab in the tab chain on Amazon go? I loaded the page in firefox, hit tab, and saw the first tab was http://amazon.com/access

Ok, this is an interesting design choice. That access link goes to a page with minimal styling, probably optimized for screen readers.

Now I'm really curious, and I pop open NVDA to give the page a listen. After the page title was read, the access link was read, which was very helpful: "A different version of this web site containing similar content optimized for screen readers and mobile devices may be found at the web address: www.amazon.com/access". It would have been best if Amazon did the work to make their default site screen reader accessible, but this is a nice alternative to having no accessibility at all.

Amazon needs to do some html/css/script minification on their homepage! Oh, nevermind, they gzipped it. :)

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#200

Post by Maert »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #191
zorbo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome automatically recognizes searches on sites, so that you can just type "ama[TAB]" in de URL bar, and it will give you a site-specific search straight in the URL bar (provided that "ama" auto-completes to "amazon.com" for you, naturally). This works for basically every site you've ever visited that has search functionality. It's pretty decent.

That's interesting, though I only care about a few sites, and prefer the brevity of the ff keywords. Sounds like the two could complement each other, like aliases and completion in a shell.

You can rename the search engine abbreviations as you like.

I have "w" for wikipedia, "y" for youtube, "gm" for google maps, etc...

This is THE feature of Chrome that I use constantly every day. It saves 5-10 seconds on each search you do every day. It adds up.

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