Re: A web interface for apropos: http://man-k.org/

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 11:03:58PM +0530, Abhinav Upadhyay wrote:
> http://man-k.org/
> 
> I would appreciate any constructive feedback that you might have and I
> will try to implement it :-)

This is a stylish and useful manual-page search, thank you!  I have some
suggestions:

Conserve screen real-estate: the NetBSD logo takes up about 1/3 the
height of my browser window.  That's fine when the only other thing on
the page is the search box, except possibly on small mobile screens.
Once there are search results to show, I suggest letting them fill the
available space with precedence over titles, branding, etc.

Don't paginate prematurely: if I search for "Realtek", there are only
two (short) pages of results.  The first set of results (minus the logo,
title, and search box) is scarcely taller than my browser window, and
the second page is shorter.  I think I could scan the entire result set
faster than I can navigate with the Next link.  There's a balance to be
struck between page-load time, navigation overhead, server processing.
I'm not sure how to strike the right balance, and you have probably
given this more thought than I have, already.

I have a hunch that if Previous and Next buttons always appear in the
same place, with inapplicable buttons missing or "greyed out," then most
users will operate the navigation more quickly and automatically than
when Previous and Next can appear in the same location.

It's awfully convenient to have a second search box at the bottom of the
search results, since usually that is where I have scrolled if I need
to refine my query.  I frequently curse Google for getting rid of the
second search box all those years ago. :-)

BTW, I was impressed that when I searched for "an" I got the
super-relevant an(4) driver as the first result.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981