Two minor search box feature requests

1) Please don't clear the contents of the search box when a different collection is selected in the left pane. The current behaviour is a particularly annoying feature!

2) Make the search box understand formatted double quotes if they are pasted in (of the 66, 99 sort) as well as the plain (11 type: ") ones that you get when you type double quotes in there directly.

Thanks!
  • Any devs looking at this?
  • I don't think I agree on #1. I see the search bar as a filter for the current view, and switching to a different view as taking you to a completely different context where you're quite possibly looking for different things and where having nothing show up could be alarming. iTunes, for example, clears the search box when switching between playlists.

    There is an inconsistency with the tag selector, though, which does preserve the tag selection. That's actually even more problematic, since that can result in nothing showing in either the items list or the tag selector itself (since the tag selector shows tags that match the current view). So I think that's what will change, not the behavior of the search bar.

    #2 is reasonable.
  • Dan, #1 is reasonable too, because one often wants (for example) to search the current collection for something, and then having not found it, one often wants to search My Library for the same thing!

    I'm not saying that the search actually has to continue to operate as a filter when switching between collections. I just don't want to have to retype my search to run it again. A suggestion: Have the search term remain in the search box greyed out, and put an X button next to it. Then the user could simply ignore it to view the collection unfiltered, or click on the search term to rerun it, or click on the X button to type in a new search.

    I don't use tags any more, but I think I agree with you on about what you said about the tag selector's behaviour.
  • Sorry, that's way too complicated and non-standard.

    We'll do #2, though.
  • Search history for that box might be a good idea, though.
  • I agree, search history for that box would make a lot of sense.
  • Complicated and non-standard
    Have you seen http://www.google.com lately?!

    (OK it doesn't have the greyed out search term I suggested in response to your comment about iTunes. But it does (i) retain the search across category selections, and (ii) have an X button to delete the current search.)
  • edited July 25, 2011
    Another google based suggestion: check out Google Documents. If you search within a label, you get a message above the search results with links to "Search in All Items" or "Clear Search".
    Also the label that you searched inside appears automatically in the search box, complete with a mini x on it which, when clicked, will delete the label from the search, and then rerun your search for you.
    That's two alternative easy ways to rerun the search in their equivalent of Zotero's My Library with a single click.
  • edited July 25, 2011
    I thought about offering google.com as a counterexample myself, but decided against it. It's a search engine, and result filtering is central to its use. This is not (so much) the case for iTunes or Zotero.

    edit @mark: my point is that it's much easier to forget about an active search in Zotero than it is when using google.com.
  • edited July 25, 2011
    I think result filtering is pretty central to the use of the quicksearch box in Zotero — especially when it becomes quick again (hobby-horse alert). I've observed quite a lot of users of Zotero, and they do tend to use quicksearch as a quick filter.

    Anyway, I'm a big fan of low-cost solutions that are useful to many users and easy to implement, and it sounds like search history for that box, as Dan Stillman suggests, would be the most expedient starting point.
  • I agree that search history would be a great addition.

    I should have noted earlier that unlike google.com, Google Documents does clear the search box when you switch folders, like Zotero. But its alternative ways of making a single-click repeat search of your whole library available are very useful - and I hope that at least one of these could be adopted by Zotero in addition to search history.
  • OK it doesn't have the greyed out search term I suggested in response to your comment about iTunes.
    That's all I was referring to as being non-standard and complicated. I already explained my reasons for not wanting the search to persist across collections above. You suggested—in bold—that it didn't have to and proposed a convoluted alternative, which I was rejecting.

    And I'm not sure why you keep mentioning the X to clear the box. The Zotero search box already has that.
  • We're not going to display a line across the top like Google Docs does. Feel free to suggest another place in the UI to add a way to rerun that search in the library root.
  • Dan, I thought you were making a broader claim. It's not obvious to me why you would think that greying out a non-active search filter is convoluted or complicated, though I respect your opinion.
    I think you misunderstood one of my remarks about Google Docs. The mini x on the name of the label you just searched within is different from the big X at the end of the search box (that's why I mentioned it). So that would be my suggestion of another place in the UI to add a way to rerun the search in My Library.
  • It's not obvious to me why you would think that greying out a non-active search filter is convoluted or complicated, though I respect your opinion.
    Do you have an example of a program that does what you're describing? I don't. It sounds pretty confusing to me.
    The mini x on the name of the label you just searched within is different from the big X at the end of the search box
    Ah, so you mean individual search tokens. Search tokens are nice, but that's a level of (coding) complexity we're probably not going to introduce into the search bar.
    So that would be my suggestion of another place in the UI to add a way to rerun the search in My Library.
    If you mean that switching to a collection would add a token for that collection to the search box, I doubt that's something we would do (even if we supported some form of search tokens). Collections in Zotero function essentially like tags, but they're not usually the same in practice, and there's not enough room in our search box for that anyway.

    Anyway, this seems like a pretty minor feature request, and I believe you're the first to make it. Barring other suggestions, search history, which would have general usefulness beyond your specific request, has the best chance of happening.
  • edited July 26, 2011
    Dan, I can't think of a current example of my greyed out inactive search filter suggestion. Windows 7 explorer places greyed out text in the search box, but it tells you which folder or library will be searched rather than recording the last search term.
    We're not going to display a line across the top like Google Docs does. Feel free to suggest another place in the UI to add a way to rerun that search in the library root.
    Why not consider this?

    A linked message such as "Search Again in My Library" could conditionally trigger only when there are no results, so that it wouldn't interfere with normal search results if that's the worry. Windows 7 explorer works this way.

    Alternatively, Google Docs and Mendeley provide a link of this kind at the top of every result page. Mac Finder provides buttons that are essentially the same thing.

    Papers simply retains the original search filter across folder/category changes, like www.google.com does.
  • Barring other suggestions, search history, which would have general usefulness beyond your specific request, has the best chance of happening.
    That sounded like Dan's last word on this and it seems reasonable to me - sure one could do more nifty things with the search bar, but a search history solves the practical issue you raise and has broader applicability - and dev time is limited.
  • A linked message such as "Search Again in My Library" could conditionally trigger only when there are no results, so that it wouldn't interfere with normal search results if that's the worry. Windows 7 explorer works this way.
    I could see doing this, since it could be done fairly unobtrusively (and trivially) by displaying a message in place of the center items list.
  • Dan, thank you for responding, search history and that tweak combined would be very helpful :-)
  • Search history would be nice, and it would be good to have a "Search Again in My Library"- maybe at the top of all result lists, because "no results" isn't the only possible outcome translating to "not the result I was looking for."

    Personally, I find the search clearing after each change, and having to retype the query in every collection, to be one of the most annoying "features" of Zotero, and I'd much appreciate at least a user option for persistence.

    Thanks for your work!
  • I agree with the requests for search persistence or at least an option to quickly rerun the last search.
  • A linked message such as "Search Again in My Library" could conditionally trigger only when there are no results, so that it wouldn't interfere with normal search results if that's the worry. Windows 7 explorer works this way.


    I could see doing this, since it could be done fairly unobtrusively (and trivially) by displaying a message in place of the center items list.
    I would be in favour of this option, or alternatively a search history. Personally I agree with Dan about the persistent search not being the best option though - for me that would just shift the annoyance from "damn, I've typed my search with the wrong collection selected, now I've got to type it again" to "damn, where have the items gone from this collection - oh, I've forgotten to clear the search bar again".
  • edited November 14, 2012
    for me that would just shift the annoyance from "damn, I've typed my search with the wrong collection selected, now I've got to type it again" to "damn, where have the items gone from this collection - oh, I've forgotten to clear the search bar again".
    If it comes down to choosing the lesser of the two evils, some people - I for one - would prefer the second evil; you can clear the search bar with one click of the mouse but retyping the search word takes several keystrokes.
  • I would be a big fan of a "Search Again in My Library" feature, too. That and/or a hotkey to shift the focus from the currently selected collection up to the root/My Library so that I could quickly (that is, without the mouse) do a global search of my library.

    I frequently find myself working deep in my collections structure and then wanting to "zoom out" and do a global search of my library. This takes a bit of mouse work: scrolling up, carefully selecting the "My Library" icon, then using Ctrl+F for quick search. That's not a "quick" process in this case!

    Thanks to all the devs for making Zotero and all these feature tweaks happen.
  • FYI, I created a solution for the use case I described above. It involves either manually hitting the follow keystroke combinations, or programming them somehow and mapping to a hotkey (on Macs this can be done with Applescript+Fastscripts, or using Better Touch Tool):


    1) cmd+shift+L (focuses Libraries Pane)
    2) Home key (highlights My Library
    3) cmd+F (focuses Quick Search Bar)

    It's a real cludge on the back end, but the best I can do until this feature is supported natively.

    I have created an Applescript so that hitting cmd+shift+F in Zotero instantly allows me to start typing a search of my entire library. Works well.

    Also created another script so that I can use a keystroke in any application that will trigger an all-library search in Zotero for whatever text I currently have highlighted.
  • When will the search history feature be implemented? I'm anxious to try it out.
  • I am currently not using the Zotero 7 beta, but as for Zotero 6, there is still no search history, no "Search again in My Library" button, nor the option to persist searches across collections.

    I find myself expecting the search to be persistent all the time. There seem to plenty of user who desire some feature to make redoing a search in another collection easier.

    Dan mentioned iTunes, but I think that is different because such searches are probably much more context specific (like a certain song on an album) than for example a thematic literature search.

    A more pertinent comparison might be Mendeley, which does persist searches across collections until the search is cleared. This message appears when there are no results:
    "No search results for "keyword" in this collection, try another collection or different keywords."

    Given such a message, I would argue that the absence of displayed articles is not alarming.

    Perhaps one of the options discussed here is or will be implemented in Zotero 7?
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