[Beta] Quick search restore after Expand and Collapse the advanced search

mjthoraval
After making a quick search, I can expand the advanced search to get more options. If I finally decide that I do not need to advanced search options, I would expect that collapsing the advanced search would move it back to quick search instead of hiding it.

Zotero 10.0-beta.22+4ec5ba9c2 (64-bit)
Windows 11
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    After closing advanced search, you mean? (Collapsing just closes the editor and keeps the advanced search active.)

    The problem is that you might have made changes that are incompatible with quick search. We could consider restoring the quick search if all such changes could still be represented as text (and in Zotero 11, many more advanced searches will be able to be represented in the quick search), but the inconsistency could be a little confusing.

    It might be fine to restore if you click X without making any changes, though.
  • mjthoraval
    edited 3 hours ago
    I mean collapsing the advanced search with the button "Collapse Advanced Search":
    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u265723/5aa2lohi290hftuokw6n.png

    The main case where I would find this useful is when the content of the Advanced Search is similar to the screenshot above, so exactly the search condition produced by expanding advanced search from a quick search.

    In that case, collapsing the advanced search editor is equivalent to the quick search, in the same way as it was equivalent when doing the expansion trip, but with the added value of actually showing what is the currently active search. So the collapse trip should use the more useful option.

    I would not expect a click on X to keep an active search.
    Also, clicking on X in that situation would do exactly the same as collapsing, with less useful information.

    I would prefer that clicking on X closes the search, but remembers the previous search conditions, similar to the search bar in a document. Considering the time needed to reach the right parameters in the UI, that would probably save some time when doing consecutive similar searches.

    Edit: For Zotero 11, this would be a nice way of discovering how advanced searches can be represented in quick search.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited 3 hours ago
    Sorry, I'm not sure what you're asking for here. If you click the collapse button, it keeps the advanced search active and collapses the editor. It's just a way to work with the advanced-search results without the editor taking up space.
  • mjthoraval
    I agree with you that the expected outcome of clicking the collapse button is to keep the search active and collapse the editor. I'm just saying the same outcome could be presented better: when the active search is still exactly what expanding the quick search produced, the collapsed state could show it in the Quick Search bar, instead of the label "Advanced Search" — which doesn't tell me what I'm looking at.

  • dstillman Zotero Team
    It wouldn't make sense to show the quick-search bar on collapse when and only when the advanced-search conditions haven't been edited. That would be totally inconsistent and confusing.

    Again, we could consider making it so that clicking the X immediately after opening quick search, without making any changes in the editor, simply reverted to the quick search. I think that would be reasonable. But the collapse button shouldn't start creating different UIs depending on what you've edited.
  • mjthoraval
    Thanks for the explanations and considering the change.
    I understand your perspective and will adjust to what is chosen.

    Just to clarify the confusion, I had been reading the funnel as opening a refinement surface for the quick search, so Advanced Search felt like the expanded view of the same search, and Collapse felt like the reverse of expanding. If instead it opens a separate Advanced Search mode, then indeed the X is the natural way back and the collapse behaviour makes sense.

    I had in mind for example the search bar in Gmail, where the expanded search collapses back to the simple text format search. I guess this will be something similar in Z11?
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