[Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site

[Tim Parkin]

Simon:
>The best advice I have ever seen on search engine usability is in Steve

>Krug's excellent book "Don't Make Me Think". There are two possible 
>options for a search interface (apologies for the poor ASCII art):

Absolutely... Heres a few other resources that support that...

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010513.html
http://world.std.com/~uieweb/observng.htm
http://www.currybet.net/articles/day_in_the_life/3.shtml

The also insist that advanced searches are hugely less important than
developers think they are. Although I removed the {go) in that last mock
up it was as a result of playing around with a google button (which
didn't work anyway) and it's back to 'go' again now.

Simon:
>I would suggest a possible third way that makes use of a snippet of 
>javascript, based on a modification of the first method shown above:
put 
>the word Search /in/ the search box (greyed out slightly) and have it 
>disappear when the user first focuses on the box. Using the labels.js 
>technique[1], this can be achieved without making the interface more 
>confusing for users with javascript disabled.
That's the approach I've taken and it seems to work in practise also.

Tim