Ticket #9282 (closed PLIP: duplicate)

Opened 7 years ago

Last modified 7 years ago

Improved search results presentation

Reported by: elvix Owned by:
Priority: minor Milestone: 4.0
Component: Templates/CSS Version:
Keywords: Cc: plip-advisories@…

Description

Plone uses search extensively. The search forms and results have, however, not been improved in a long time. There are several small steps that can be done to make the presentation of search results much more comfortable and practical to use.

  • Add sorting to the search results listing: Sort by: relevance (i.e the default), date (newest first), alphabetically
  • Remove the display of relevance in the listing. It just adds noise and doesn't help the user. Sorting by relevance helps, not printing the relevance.
  • Path in the results list: Many times, objects have similar or same names and it is hard to tell them apart. Google has a nice url display in green. This one can possibly (depending on performance impact) be improved even further by listing the titles of containing folders rather than their path.
  • Real human names: Show real names instead of usernames (throughout all of Plone, so worthy of its own plip)
  • easy-to-read dates: "Last modified Nov 10, 2007 10:43 PM" is painful to read. "Last modified 2 weeks ago" makes sense when you read results and is more scannable
  • Left align the description with the title, so the results are less painful to read.

Deliverables

  • A search results view that supports sorting
  • Updated ZPT and CSS for presenting the search results

Risks

Potential of small performance loss by looking up real names and folder paths.

Progress

Prototyped in static HTML

Attachments

Picture 5.png Download (50.4 KB) - added by elvix 7 years ago.
Current search results presentation
Picture 4.png Download (56.9 KB) - added by elvix 7 years ago.
Proposed improved search results presentation

Change History

Changed 7 years ago by elvix

Current search results presentation

Changed 7 years ago by elvix

Proposed improved search results presentation

comment:1 Changed 7 years ago by elvix

Looks as if we are duplicating some work: https://dev.plone.org/plone/ticket/9271

comment:2 Changed 7 years ago by jonstahl

Also: show the content type (in text, very small print) for each result.

comment:3 Changed 7 years ago by laurenskling

I really like the listing idea, didn't put that in my PLIP, but I support it greatly!

Also the real names should definitely be inserted Plone-wide. I mean, who is elvix? ;)

comment:4 Changed 7 years ago by laurenskling

oh wait, i did put the listing idea in my PLIP... oops. (don't have edit rights to edit my post)

comment:5 Changed 7 years ago by elvix

Lurens. elvix is Geir Bækholt. This is an 8 year old username. I have no idea if it is changeable, so i'll just keep it. :)

What is the "listing idea"?

comment:6 Changed 7 years ago by laurenskling

I know it was you, that's why it was a good example. How many times before did you have to explain? +1 on making it a Plone-wide PLIP. Usernames are something personal, I don't think Plone is a system where people want to stay anonymous.

the listing idea: yours: "* Add sorting to the search results listing: Sort by: relevance (i.e the default), date (newest first), alphabetically "

mine: "- Sorting. The search results can't be sorted in any way at the moment. People like to sort their results on for example date/name/location. "

In Sorrento, we spoke about changing all the kinds of listings (contents, search, collections) into one. This really would be a big improvement, giving the opportunity to sort results, cut/copy/paste the items and unify Plone once again (just like all kinds of pages are edited the same way). If we can make this in Plone 4, I would be one happy ploner. :)

comment:7 Changed 7 years ago by elvix

Laurens,

…ahh. i missed the ;)

  • Please submit a PLIP for username consolidation. That will be most useful
  • I am planning to submit one for consolidating all lists (collections, search results, etc) to the same interface on the technical level.

None of these are, however, really relevant for this PLIP. They can both be implemented separately.

comment:8 Changed 7 years ago by laurenskling

Geir,

real names PLIP:  http://dev.plone.org/plone/ticket/9305. Please add anything missing.

thanks

comment:9 Changed 7 years ago by alecm

These all seem like great ideas for Plone 4.0. If Plone were to move to allow emails as usernames (#9214), displaying full names everywhere would become a necessity. Displaying the url/path would have a minimal impact on performance, but we'd probably want some caching applied to the userid -> full name mapping.

comment:10 Changed 7 years ago by elvix

Alec. displaying path will not have performance impact. But we should strive to display the titles in the path if possible, not the url path. That will need a more clever solution to not cause large performance impact.

comment:11 Changed 7 years ago by alecm

Indeed, that could be very expensive. I have my doubts that it's worth calculating breadcrumbs for every search result, considering that the ids in the url are generally very similar to titles. A non-intrusive display of the url might be enough.

There are cases where search results may point to external resources (e.g. Link types that redirect as proposed in another PLIP, ...), in that case the (external) url might be more useful than the breadcrumb trail of container titles.

comment:12 Changed 7 years ago by alecm

+1 the ideas here are all good as is the mockup.

Do we need two similar PLIPs though (#9271)

comment:13 Changed 7 years ago by elvix

This PLIP and #9271 should be merged.

comment:14 Changed 7 years ago by laurenskling

I agree on merging the PLIPs. I probably do not have the rights, can you?

comment:15 Changed 7 years ago by erikrose

Clearing Owner field of 4.0 PLIPs so we can use it to mean "implementor". (Many of these owners were automatically assigned from choosing a Component that had a default owner.)

comment:16 Changed 7 years ago by smcmahon

  • Cc plip-advisories@… added

comment:17 Changed 7 years ago by MatthewWilkes

FWT Vote: +1 on the condition that the merging happens, and only 1 of the two PLIPs are submitted for code review.

comment:18 Changed 7 years ago by rossp

FWT vote +1. I'd like to see this and #9271 merged into #9327.

comment:19 Changed 7 years ago by davisagli

Geir, can you please coordinate with Laurens and merge #9271 into this PLIP? Ross, I disagree that these two search-related PLIPs should be merged into #9327...I'd like to see both happen, but the search improvements are useful even if the revamping of listings doesn't come to fruition.

I am hesitant about displaying the dates like "Last modified 2 weeks ago" unless this is configurable and also used in the other places where dates show up in Plone.

FWT vote: +1

comment:20 Changed 7 years ago by raphael

FWT vote: +1

comment:21 Changed 7 years ago by calvinhp

FWT Vote: +1 and +1 for the merging.

comment:22 Changed 7 years ago by esteele

Approved by FWT vote (pending merge).

comment:23 Changed 7 years ago by alecm

  • Status changed from new to closed
  • Resolution set to duplicate

Closing as this has been superseded by #9352

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