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ifSearchUI
Category: Layout and presentation
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Other products by this author
ifSearchUI is a product that will implement user interface changes to a Plone site to incorporate search engine best practices. It provides changes on how the results are displayed (including, displaying the search criteria and providing a box for searching again), what happens if there are no results, and also validates the search criteria. It also includes a page of Search Tips that explains the syntax that can be used by default on a Plone site.
Current release
No stable release available yet.
Experimental releases
Upcoming and alpha/beta/candidate releases
- Alpha releases should only be used for testing and development.
- Beta releases and Release Candidates are normally released for production testing, but should not be used on mission-critical sites.
- Always install on a separate test server first, and make sure you have proper backups before installing.
Project Description
- Project resources
Releases
Project page
Issue tracker
Code repositoryGoal of Project
The goal of this project is to improve the user interface of Plone in relation to the search engine. It applies a series of small template changes and scripts to your Plone site to incorporate the features listed below.Background of the Project
This project was developed by ifPeople with the support of Health Sciences Online (HSO). HSO's site is an indexed, searchable collection of health sciences information. Thanks to HSO and its visionary leaders for funding development of these products and their commitment to contributing back to the Plone community. The best practices identified for changes provided here were derived from a series of user testing performed with the HSO site as well as with the help of recommendations from the Adaptive Path report on site search usability.Features of this Product
Search Interface
Basic change here is: validation. That's right...you search default plone with no criteria and you get no results. Not very helpful...so we validate the search and require a criteria.Search Results Page
This page required extensive overhaul in terms of the interface in
order to meet best practices and user expectations. We used the
recommendations of Adaptive Path in its search engine usability
research report to guide changes initially. The most significant (even
if minor) change included:
- Show the search criteria on the results page
- Provide a search box on the results page
- Number the results on each page
- Paging links are offered above the results (as well as default Plone links below the results)
- Document type icons shown (ie PDF symbol next to PDF documents retrieved in the results)
Search Help and No Results
We added in some help text and suggestions in the case that no results are found. We also added in help text for the search feature, and link it from the search interface itself.Related Products
You may also be interested in:- ifSearchUI to implement user interface best practices for your site search
- ifSearchMonitor to track searches and recommend results to your users
