* New search for the Forums

[BillH]

Jane,

The change to open a new window and to re-use that window works very well. Much nicer than right clicking and using "open link in new tab".

I also like the new format of the results list after your latest tweaks.

Thanks!

[tatewise]

Yes, that is neater - thanks.

[Jane]

Thanks both, I had a slight hicup with some of my indexing routines but I think they are working ok now.

Should I replace the search at the top of the forums or leave it for a bit?

[Jane]

....

[tatewise]

Do you have to replace, or can it be alongside as a trial, and get user feedback?

If it has to replace, can it say it is a trial and we welcome feedback?

[Jane]

I have added the new search to the Home Page for now.

[Jane]

I have now worked out how to highlight elements in the results and also it now remembers the search if you move off the page, so it won't now open a window.

If you hover on a "long" result content it will pop open so you can see all of it (up to 8,000 characters anyway)

[BillH]

Jane,

It remembers the search but it doesn't remember the position in the results list. So, if I'm down 100 items in the list and go to the link and come back it puts me back at the top and I have to page all the way down again to find my spot.

Any chance of fixing this? If not can we go back to having it open a new window?

[tatewise]

@Bill ~ Which browser are you using?
It returns to the correct position way down the list when using Firefox Quantum 58.0.2 (64-bit).

@Jane ~ Yes, it gets better and better.

Can the search text be more Google-like?
i.e.
1) Allow "string quotes" to enclose a phrase to be treated as one word?
e.g.
"Family Historian" "Problem Reporting" only searches for those two phrases, rather than the four words.

2) Force a word prefixed by minus, to be excluded from the search?

[BillH]

Mike,

I am using Google Chrome Version 64.0.3282.186 (Official Build) (64-bit).

[Jane]

Advanced Query options turned on.

Bill, it's moving to the correct location in firefox. Tomorrow I will try it in Chrome and report it if it does not work for me. Don't forget if you add a few extra words the search will be narrowed down.

[tatewise]

That is looking good.

[BillH]

Jane,

The search capabilities are looking good as well as how the results are displayed. As for the position, it works fine for me in Firefox as well, but I use Chrome as my every day browser so hopefully you can get it to work as well.

Thanks

[gsward]

When there are multiple results from the same thread would they be better grouped? Or a "group by thread option"?

Graham

[Jane]

Because of the way the index is built and searched it won't be easy to combine them with out making the search a great deal slower.

[joanchop]

Jane
Just used the ‘new search’ facility and it works a treat. Love the way it splits the search into years so that you can choose. Thank you Jane

[bonalymac]

Hello Jane

I like the look of the new search, and was just having a play with it. (Thanks for your work on this and other issues).

I used the "old" search for the phrase "unattached", and got 5 hits from the user groups. When I tried it in the new version, I got 1,292! mostly from the Forums.

So I looked closely at how it built up to that figure. As I key in the characters "unatt", the search returns 25 hits (including 3 of the "Old" search hits).

Adding a further "a" then "c" reduces the hits down to 8 then 7. So far brilliant.

However adding the "h" to make "unattach" now results in 2,188 hits. Presumably this is because we now have a proper word hidden within the search term. Whether this is a valid result for a basic search however is another question.

The 5th hit (and others) however is based on finding the search term "attach". So the ranking of a partial word is coming very high in the results. In this case it hasn't listed (at least near the top) the 5th hit that the old search found.

Ideally, I am assuming that exact hits should all appear together at the top - and that this has happened here. To have confidence in the search, we need to feel that all exact matches have been found and displayed clearly. The logic I would have thought should suggest that as more characters are entered, the number of hits should decrease.

An advanced search option might sensibly offer words within words.

Colin

[tatewise]

Colin, to get it to find just "unattached" then search for exactly that enclosed in string quotes.
It finds the same as the first few perfect unattached matches without string quotes.

My search for unattac and unattach found the same perfect matches for unattached first.

When searching for unatta it also finds 'close' matches such as unattractive and unattributed, which helps if not sure how words are spelled.

[bonalymac]

Yes I do see that about the quotes, I had forgotten that use in other searches like Google.

[Steven Monrad]

New user and got a 'new search' note and request for comment on what looks like a home page for FHUG.

Online sites listed on Facebook FHUG page are -

The main website is at http://www.fhug.org.uk/
The support forum is at http://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/
The knowledgebase is at http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/

The site where I got the 'new search' note says User's Group, and appears to have the same URL root as all of these. So perhaps the proposal is to limit the search function to the home page?
Comment would be - useful to have previous search threads available to learn, rather than create new thread for topics which have already been addressed by experienced users.