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

[Abhinav Upadhyay <er.abhinav.upadhyay%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 2:08 AM, David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost> wrote:
> 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:

Thanks David, really appreciate all the feedback :)

> 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.

Yes, I have also felt that the logo is taking too much space. I will
make it smaller.

> 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 am just dividing results in sets of 10, I guess I could make it 15 or 20.
Performance wise it doesn't impact much. I will try experimenting
after reducing the logo size.

> 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.

I guess that makes sense, I didn't think about it. I will try this out.

>
> 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. :-)

I am pretty bad with CSS, I will try adding a search at the bottom,
once I can get it to look good, I will add it :-D

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

Thank you :-), I am still trying to figure out ways to improve the
relevance of the search results, I am kind of obsessed about it :-D

--
Abhinav