CFA/Search-Research
From MozillaWiki
< CFA
« Comparative Feature Analyses
« Search Notes
Contents
General Browser Capabilities
Purpose
Examine a bunch of browsers, existing Firefox Add-ons, and web services to generate a report that describes:
- Which capabilities each has
- A summary of where each is different/unique
- Some conclusions about which aspects seem most innovative and interesting that we might want to consider for Firefox
Browsers to investigate
- Firefox 2
- Camino
- Flock
- iCab
- IE 7
- Maxthon
- Netscape
- OmniWeb
- Opera
- Safari
- SeaMonkey
- Shiira
Add-ons to investigate
Firefox
- CustomizeGoogle link
- Answers link
- GooglePreview link
- LinkedIn Companion link
- SearchWith link
- DictionarySearch link
- Groowe Search Toolbar link
- Loki link
- OpenSearchFox link
- Visual-Search Extension link
Safari
- Sogudi - shortcut keyword searches
- Saft link
- Insquisitor link - rich search results, autocomplete, search suggestions
Meeting Takeaways
- Search Engines
- Multiple search engines - slow, not useful for most users
- Implement default search engine selection and one-time search engine use
- one-time search engine use could be a specific configurable keystroke (as in Inquisitor)
- Need a better way to notify users of the ability to add a search engine; Google Toolbar has a more in-your-face way of asking you
- Address Bar
- Investigate way to integrate Search Bar and Address Bar into a unified search mechanism (one bar instead of two)
- Unlock ability to use search engines through keywords in the address bar
- Search Bar
- Suggestions are being cut off
- gavinbot - truncate beginning of similar results (doesn't work w/ yahoo suggests, which may not follow what you've typed so far)
- shift box to the right
- Word "Suggestion" is being cut off (fixed)
- Suggestions are being cut off
- Search Results
- We like Inquisitor - use 3 search results because that's all people look at. But, use green URLs, blue Titles, just like Google search results. Does it breach our Google contract though since users can bypass Google search results pages (and ads)?
- Search this Page
- Search this site should be an extension of Find in this Page
- Change UI of find as you type because it is for accessibility whereas regular users use find in page
- Future of Search
- Integrate QuickSilver-type functionality into the browser; that is, have hotkeys to do searches on the browser on a pop-up layer above the webpage, w/o needing a search bar
- Introduce and test a unified address/search bar for the QS pop-up, and then tweak it later for the main browser window implementation
- Rich search results (a la askx.com with blogs, videos, images, news, weather, maps, etc. in search results depending on query)
- Helping people search (providing suggestions, helping users write queries)
- Visual-Search Extension?
