Hi,
I received an interesting question recently: if you have a big list, without any sections, and you search for a term that appears more than once, the search results show only the first appearance of the keyword in the page. Is there any way to show all the places where that word appears and to be able to redirect the user to that precise location (let's say "precise location" means "the last anchor before the keyword appears")?
Thanks, Strainu
2012/7/30 Strainu strainu10@gmail.com
Hi,
I received an interesting question recently: if you have a big list, without any sections, and you search for a term that appears more than once, the search results show only the first appearance of the keyword in the page. Is there any way to show all the places where that word appears and to be able to redirect the user to that precise location (let's say "precise location" means "the last anchor before the keyword appears")?
Is it solved anywhere on the web? Do we have to add extra features to normal web services? Is it worth to waste resources to prevent users of using their Ctrl F? Does it help them if the last anchor is two screens above the match? Will the results list be more useable with those long texts for a lot of matches?
2012/7/30 Bináris wikiposta@gmail.com:
2012/7/30 Strainu strainu10@gmail.com
Hi,
I received an interesting question recently: if you have a big list, without any sections, and you search for a term that appears more than once, the search results show only the first appearance of the keyword in the page. Is there any way to show all the places where that word appears and to be able to redirect the user to that precise location (let's say "precise location" means "the last anchor before the keyword appears")?
Lots of questions here :)
Is it solved anywhere on the web?
Yes. The best known example is the Google page preview.
Do we have to add extra features to normal web services?
You don't *have* to do anything. It was an open-ended question. Perhaps Lucene already has such a feature?
Is it worth to waste resources to prevent users of using their Ctrl F?
Yes, if we have lots of non-technical users needing to search for something in the list, like we do at Wiki Loves Monuments.
Anyway, we already do this, to some extent. For instance when we redirect users to a relevant section. Adding a similar feature for arbitrary anchors does not seem so complicated.
Does it help them if the last anchor is two screens above the match?
You should ask the person who implemented the "redirect to section" feature, but I would guess the answer is yes. This is a corner case, anyway.
Will the results list be more useable with those long texts for a lot of matches?
It all depends on how you present them. For instance, you could hide additional occurrences. Brandon could probably find a suitable solution.
Strainu
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org