picking an alternate search engine for a particular search
Myk Melez
search engine for a particular search.
Similarly to the way search suggestions appear below the search box when
available, and users can select one with the mouse or by pressing the
down arrow key...
We might display search engines in a bar of buttons across the top of
the search box (when the box is focused) and let users select one with
the mouse or by pressing the up arrow key to get into the bar and then
the left and right arrow keys to move from button to button.
I.e., if this is the search box when it isn't focused:
[G|_________________|q)
Then something like this might be the search box when it is focused,
where each square-bracketed letter is a sticky button displaying the
icon of a search engine:
[G][Y][W][A][a][e][cc]
[G|________________|Q)
Benefits of doing this include:
* makes alternate engines more discoverable, since they'd be visible
for every search;
* makes alternate engines more browsable by keyboard (compared to the
current ctrl-down arrow key mechanism for changing the default search
engine), since you can see the engines you are browsing;
* enables "alternate engine for just this search" behavior, which
currently requires setting a default engine and then unsetting it
after the search;
* potentially enables a variety of other behaviors, like "search
multiple engines, each one opening in tabs" (f.e. by letting the user
keep multiple buttons pressed if shift-clicking them).
The primary downsides are complexity and perhaps distractiveness,
although users might quickly learn to tune out the search button bar
when they aren't interested in it, just as they tune out suggestions
when they don't want any.
Other issues:
* the button bar might obscure other UI, although this seems
reasonable if displayed only when the search box is focused;
* the bar might not fit all installed engines, so we might need to
make it scrollable;
* displaying the bar above the search box when the box is in the menu
bar (i.e. right below the window title bar) might be challenging
technically.
Thoughts?
-myk
Omega X
The arrow next to the icon shows that its a dropdown dialog to choose a
search engine.
Myk Melez
> The arrow next to the icon shows that its a dropdown dialog to choose a
> search engine.
Sure, and that makes it possible to choose a different default search
engine, but it remains hard to browse engines with the keyboard and to
use an alternate search engine for just one search.
-myk
Thomas Stache
(At least on Windows) Hit F4 while the searchbox has the focus, and the
menu will drop down. Then it's easy to switch the engine by keyboard. I
believe this is a system default shortcut of every combobox.
Thomas
Myk Melez
> (At least on Windows) Hit F4 while the searchbox has the focus, and the
> menu will drop down. Then it's easy to switch the engine by keyboard. I
> believe this is a system default shortcut of every combobox.
Hmm, that's very useful. It makes browsing engines with the keyboard
easy, and it works on Linux as well, although it doesn't seem to work on
the Mac (perhaps the Mac uses a different shortcut).
Nevertheless, I don't think this takes us the whole way there, since:
1. you can't select an alternate search engine for a single search;
2. the keyboard shortcut is difficult to discover.
Of these, I think the first is the most important. Shortcut
discoverability is icing on the cake, but making it easy to select an
alternate search engine for a given search seems crucial to making our
search interface usable for users who use one search engine most of the
time but use others for specialized searches occasionally.
-myk
Gavin Sharp
> Thomas Stache wrote:
>
>> (At least on Windows) Hit F4 while the searchbox has the focus, and the
>> menu will drop down. Then it's easy to switch the engine by keyboard. I
>> believe this is a system default shortcut of every combobox.
>
> Hmm, that's very useful. It makes browsing engines with the keyboard
> easy, and it works on Linux as well, although it doesn't seem to work
> on the Mac (perhaps the Mac uses a different shortcut).
For what it's worth, Alt+Up (or Alt+Down) to open the dropdown should
work on all platforms.
Gavin
Jay Goldman
Gavin Sharp wrote:
> For what it's worth, Alt+Up (or Alt+Down) to open the dropdown should
> work on all platforms.
Option-Up (or Option-Down) seems to work on my Mac - thanks Gavin!
That's a great tip.
I do agree with Myk here though - I find that I often want to do a
search in Wikipedia for one item, so I switch my engine over and then
forget to switch it back, and then hit Cmd-K (or Ctrl-K for Windows
users), type in a query, and get Wikipedia results when I'm expecting
Google.
I'm not sure if Myk is on the right track with tabs (what happens where
there are lots? how do we squeeze them in above the field?) but I think
we should pay some attention to it. There was a whole question with the
Search field of also allowing you to add a new engine for this session
only (the concept of "use" this engine rather than "add" this engine)
which was left out of Fx2 because we couldn't figure out a way to
explain it succinctly in the menu, so we might want to think about how
that factors in.
A quick idea: what if you put focus on the field (cmd-k, click, etc.),
and could then use a keyboard shortcut to "scroll" through search
engines for one time use? For example, I might hit cmd-k, then
ctrl-left and ctrl-right and have the provider icon actually scroll
through my engines (almost think of a slot machine going sideways)
until I find the one I want, then I do my query and it reverts to the
default. Since you can order the engines in the Manage Search Engines
dialog, your more commonly used ones are likely to be grouped together
at the top of the list anyway. In my case, my menu goes:
Google
Wikipedia
Radiant Core Blog Search
LinkedIn
and then a bunch of things I rarely, if ever, use. So, if I wanted to
search our blog, I would hit cmd-k, ctrl-right, ctrl-right, enter
query, return. Two thoughts:
1) This is a pretty hidden keyboard shortcut which could be difficult
to expose, so is it a good solution?
2) If the engine reverts to the default immediately following the
"temporary" selection, does the search query stay in the field like it
does now?
Thanks,
Jay Goldman
President, Radiant Core
-----------------------------------------------
We build websites that build your business.
Improve your online presence with helpful advice from the Radiant
Corps: www.radiantcore.com/blog/
Mike Shaver
> I do agree with Myk here though - I find that I often want to do a
> search in Wikipedia for one item, so I switch my engine over and then
> forget to switch it back, and then hit Cmd-K (or Ctrl-K for Windows
> users), type in a query, and get Wikipedia results when I'm expecting
> Google.
For me, and I'm probably deeply in the minority here, being able to
associate a bookmark keyword thing with a search engine would be a
huge step forward.
Especially if we made bookmark keywords work with suggestions, mmm.
Mike
Mike Shaver
> Just to clarify - that would be typing something like "wikipedia mike
> shaver" into the search box (or even "w mike shaver") and having it search
> on Wikipedia even if the engine is set to Google? I could get behind that
> idea in a big way, though I still think it might be too hard to discover to
> make it the idea fix.
I actually meant that I'd type "wp mike shaver" in the location bar,
like I do with bookmark keywords, and that suggestions would be shown
in the history/autocomplete dropdown. I'd be able to associate "wp"
with the search plugin for wikipedia through a properties menu or
something -- plugins could have their own defaults too, I suppose.
(This would also let me use the awesome search suggest stuff without
needing to eat the real-estate for the entry box, select dropdown, and
search button, which on smaller screens would let me see more of the
URLs and history-titles that I'm working with. Am I overselling? :) )
Making it work in the search box would be a little harder, I think,
because it would be hard to google for information about wikipedia,
but maybe those cases are workable. A preceding colon or bang some
such could work for that:
!wp greatest american hero
!bugzilla play button disable
I think the important pieces are:
- a keyboard-only way to search against an installed engine once
- doing that in a way that still lets suggest work
Mike
Jay Goldman
> I actually meant that I'd type "wp mike shaver" in the location bar,
> like I do with bookmark keywords, and that suggestions would be shown
> in the history/autocomplete dropdown.
I'm kinda with you on this, though you're basically imposing a hidden
mode on the location bar which sometimes displays history and sometimes
display search suggestions. Hidden modes can be very confusing if it
isn't clear what causes them - consider the case of someone who
installs the Wikipedia search engine, which we'll say defaults to a
"wp" keyboard, but who doesn't know about that part of the
functionality. Now when they type "wp" into the location bar, it stops
behaving the way it used to. Perhaps too much of a edge case, although
someone might create a search engine with "www" as the default keyword
and now the location bar stops working completely :)
> (This would also let me use the awesome search suggest stuff without
> needing to eat the real-estate for the entry box, select dropdown, and
> search button, which on smaller screens would let me see more of the
> URLs and history-titles that I'm working with. Am I overselling? :) )
I agree totally with that part - it would mean that "power" users could
ditch the search box and just use the location bar, though they would
lose our AWESOME BLUE GLOW to notify them of a new search engine
plugin.
> !wp greatest american hero
> !bugzilla play button disable
The bang has weird connotations to logic aficionados (thanks Fx2 spell
check! I had no hope of getting that right) and developers: looks like
notwp and notbugzilla to me. I think I'd rather see
wp: greatest american hero
bugzilla: go button disable
If we were doing that in the search box, I'm thinking typing "w" would
do nothing, then "wp" would still do nothing, but adding "wp:" would
change the icon to Wikipedia so you can see that you've set the engine.
Maybe we can think of some kind of transition or graphical effect that
shows it's a temporary change and doesn't replace the default.
> - a keyboard-only way to search against an installed engine once
I'd second that, though I'd also ideally like to see a non-keyboard way
as well. Keyboard only shortcuts are great for "power" users but
basically useless and non-discoverable for everyone else. We've got a
lot of non-discoverable features in the UI already (particularly around
the tabstrip, like double-clicking to open a new tab, or scrolling in
overflow mode), so I'm trying to make sure we don't keep adding more.
> - doing that in a way that still lets suggest work
Agreed! Suggest is awesome.
Mike Shaver
> Mike Shaver wrote:
>
> > I actually meant that I'd type "wp mike shaver" in the location bar,
> > like I do with bookmark keywords, and that suggestions would be shown
> > in the history/autocomplete dropdown.
>
> I'm kinda with you on this, though you're basically imposing a hidden
> mode on the location bar which sometimes displays history and sometimes
> display search suggestions.
The location bar already has multiple modes[*], and this one would be
less hidden than most of the others, since the suggest dropdown would
give a good clue as to what would happen if you pressed "enter".
[*] loading a URL, invoking a "bookmark keyword", doing an "I'm
feeling lucky" search.
Also, the search dropdown went from search-history to
search-history-and-suggestions without too much disruption, so I'm
confident we can work this one out!
Mike
Myk Melez
> Mike Shaver wrote:
>> - a keyboard-only way to search against an installed engine once
>
> I'd second that, though I'd also ideally like to see a non-keyboard way
> as well.
Chofmann has suggested a couple other possibilities:
> how about clicking on G searches on google, Y on yahoo..
>
> ________________[G][Y][W][A][a][e][cc] |Q)
>
> or this could make sense if we simplified the number of providers down
> to providers for web, encylpedia, shopping, auction...
>
> ________________[G][W][A][e] |Q)
A third possibility is to expose a single button by default but let
users add additional ones, so stock Firefox looks like this:
[________________|G)
But one could make it look like this (or any other combination of
buttons) instead, where the first button is the default, and keyboard
users can tab from the search bar onto each button in turn.
[________________|G|A|W)
-myk
danmills
> A third possibility is to expose a single button by default but let
> users add additional ones, so stock Firefox looks like this:
>
> [________________|G)
>
> But one could make it look like this (or any other combination of
> buttons) instead, where the first button is the default, and keyboard
> users can tab from the search bar onto each button in turn.
>
> [________________|G|A|W)
I rather like this proposal. One concern that I have with your first
one one (where the buttons are on top) is that I don't think there's
enough space in between the search box and the window titlebar to fit
buttons of any reasonable size. This is particularly true when "use
small icons" is enabled.
Also, tabbing feels more convenient than using the arrow keys to me.
However, I do see one problem. It seems to me that one would naturally
place commonly-used search engines into that area, since it makes them
more visible and easier to use. But what about the lesser-used engines
that did not merit their inclusion into that set? They are still in
the dropdown, but that means that selecting them makes them the
default, and they are the engines which the user is least likely to
want set as the default.
Perhaps we could provide a different way of setting a default search
engine altogether. Do we have any data about how often users are
likely to want to change the default search engine?
Dan
Myk Melez
> However, I do see one problem. It seems to me that one would naturally
> place commonly-used search engines into that area, since it makes them
> more visible and easier to use. But what about the lesser-used engines
> that did not merit their inclusion into that set? They are still in the
> dropdown, but that means that selecting them makes them the default, and
> they are the engines which the user is least likely to want set as the
> default.
Hmm, good point.
One possibility would be to make each button be a drop-down menu. Then
users could use one of them (probably the rightmost one) for those
rarely-used third-tier alternates.
For example, a user might search using Google most of the time but
occasionally look for products on Amazon, sometimes refer to Wikipedia,
and rarely try one of the other engines.
So she might configure her toolbar like this, where Google is the
default (i.e. the one which gets invoked when she presses "return" in
the search field), Amazon and Wikipedia are also available via buttons,
and a fourth button invokes whatever rare engine she last selected for it:
[________________|G|A|W|x)
Or she might find that she doesn't use Wikipedia much more frequently
than the rarely-used engines and use that button to select the latter,
optimizing for fewer buttons at the cost of having to reselect Wikipedia
sometimes after using that button for a different engine.
And, for discoverability and to reduce the burden of configuration,
perhaps we might find a way to detect when users use other search
engines on a regular basis and reveal to them the possibility of adding
buttons for those engines to the search bar.
-myk
Asa Dotzler
How about this. Under the search suggestions (or autocomplete) we simply
append a row for each of the alternate search engines. It would look
something like this:
.--------------------------.
|[G] some tex |
'--------------------------'
| some text |
| some terriers |
| some text missing |
| some test |
| some team names |
| some teams have m... |
+--------------------------+
|[Y] Search Using Yahoo |
|[E] Search Using Ebay |
|[A] Search Using Amazon |
+--------------------------+
| Manage Search Engines... |
'--------------------------'
The advantage of this layout covers what I think are the most important
benefits of Myk's original proposal (discoverability, alternate search
for just this earch) while avoiding the pitfalls of the new widgetry
(scaling with many engines, positioning issues, etc.)
Manage search engines doesn't need to be at the end of this list, but if
we did put it there, we could eliminate the engine dropdown picker.
If we think most people stick with one engine except for the occasional
one-off, then quickly switching (the default) doesn't seem that
valuable. This would simplify the whole widget and remove the rarely
discovered favicon dropdown engine selector.
This is sort of what Flock does.
- A
Nunya Bidness
>
> How about this. Under the search suggestions (or autocomplete) we simply
> append a row for each of the alternate search engines. It would look
> something like this:
>
I think this is an awesome idea. Except, I'd probably want a checkbox in
the "manage engines" dialog that let me decide which few would show up
there.
One thing to note is that this seems to prevent doing a one-off search
with suggested search text.
Myk Melez
>
> How about this. Under the search suggestions (or autocomplete) we simply
> append a row for each of the alternate search engines.
Hmm, that does sound promising. It avoids the additional complexity of
multiple search buttons while adding discoverability and the ability to
pick an alternate engine for a specific search.
One issue is what to do when we have no suggestions. Probably we should
show the dropdown anyway, but without any suggestions, if there are
alternate engines on the dropdown which we want users to be able to select.
> If we think most people stick with one engine except for the occasional
> one-off, then quickly switching (the default) doesn't seem that
> valuable. This would simplify the whole widget and remove the rarely
> discovered favicon dropdown engine selector.
I think there are two questions here:
1. how often users want to change the default search engine;
2. how often users want to use an alternate engine.
My suspicion is that the answer to #1 is almost never, in which case
offering the ability to quickly switch the default isn't very useful, as
you note.
As for #2, it may vary widely, and perhaps different solutions are
better for different users. For example, a user who uses an alternate
engine only 5% of the time is probably best served by an item for that
engine in the "suggestions" dropdown.
On the other hand, a user who conducts 60% of his searches on the
default engine, 20% on another engine, and 20% on a third engine might
be better served by buttons for those engines in the search box itself,
if such buttons are easier to select.
-myk
Asa Dotzler
> Asa Dotzler wrote:
>>
>> How about this. Under the search suggestions (or autocomplete) we
>> simply append a row for each of the alternate search engines.
>
> Hmm, that does sound promising. It avoids the additional complexity
> of multiple search buttons while adding discoverability and the
> ability to pick an alternate engine for a specific search.
>
> One issue is what to do when we have no suggestions. Probably we
> should show the dropdown anyway, but without any suggestions, if there
> are alternate engines on the dropdown which we want users to be able
> to select.
We do autocomplete when there's no suggestion, right? Also, we could
include the suggestions under each alternative search engine in the menu
(it might get quite long that way but it would be informative.)
>
>
>> If we think most people stick with one engine except for the
>> occasional one-off, then quickly switching (the default) doesn't seem
>> that valuable. This would simplify the whole widget and remove the
>> rarely discovered favicon dropdown engine selector.
>
> I think there are two questions here:
>
> 1. how often users want to change the default search engine;
> 2. how often users want to use an alternate engine.
>
> My suspicion is that the answer to #1 is almost never, in which case
> offering the ability to quickly switch the default isn't very useful,
> as you note.
>
> As for #2, it may vary widely, and perhaps different solutions are
> better for different users. For example, a user who uses an alternate
> engine only 5% of the time is probably best served by an item for that
> engine in the "suggestions" dropdown.
>
> On the other hand, a user who conducts 60% of his searches on the
> default engine, 20% on another engine, and 20% on a third engine might
> be better served by buttons for those engines in the search box
> itself, if such buttons are easier to select.
If you populated suggestions for each engine in the dropdown, then the
user would essentially be using all suggestion-capable engines at once.
It would look something like this:
.--------------------------.
|[G] some tex |
'--------------------------'
| some text |
| some terriers |
| some text missing |
| some test |
| some team names |
| some teams have m... |
+--------------------------+
|[Y] Search Using Yahoo |
| some text |
| some texas jokes |
| some text missing |
| why value some tex... |
| going to copy some... |
|[E] Search Using Ebay |
|[A] Search Using Amazon |
+--------------------------+
| Manage Search Engines... |
'--------------------------'
That's not a complete solution, but sometimes 80% with a simple and
intuitive UI is better than 90% with a complex and difficult UI :-)
- A
Asa Dotzler
Just do this then:
.--------------------------.
|[G] some tex |
'--------------------------'
| some text |
| some terriers |
| some text missing |
| some test |
| some team names |
| some teams have m... |
+--------------------------+
|[E] Search Using Ebay |
+--------------------------+
|[Y] Search Using Yahoo |
| some text |
| some texas jokes |
| some text missing |
| why value some tex... |
| going to copy some... |
+--------------------------|
|[A] Search Using Amazon |
+--------------------------+
| Manage Search Engines... |
'--------------------------'
This way, you expose all the suggested search text.
- A
Chris Ilias
> Then something like this might be the search box when it is focused,
> where each square-bracketed letter is a sticky button displaying the
> icon of a search engine:
>
> [G][Y][W][A][a][e][cc]
> [G|________________|Q)
I understand the need for better discovery; but that method clutters the
UI too much. Particularly for those who have installed many more search
engines.
One thing I've found myself being frustrated with, if I've entered a
search, and then want to use another search engine, I have to select a
new search engine, then re-trigger the search. Ideally, if I do a
search, then choose another engine from the drop-down list, it should
automatically start that search once I've changed the search engine.
--
Chris Ilias
mozilla.test.multimedia moderator
Mozilla links <http://ilias.ca>
(Please do not email me tech support questions)
Adam Kowalczyk
> One thing I've found myself being frustrated with, if I've entered a
> search, and then want to use another search engine, I have to select a
> new search engine, then re-trigger the search. Ideally, if I do a
> search, then choose another engine from the drop-down list, it should
> automatically start that search once I've changed the search engine.
I remember this already being discussed and it was refused. This
behavior is indeed very handy in the use case you're describing but it
can cause problems on some other occasions. Let's say there's already
some text from previous searches in the field. Now, if I want to start a
new search, I can't pick an engine before entering the search terms,
because it would trigger the search using the old terms. For people that
have a habit of picking the engine before typing it would be really
frustrating.
So we have to choose between irritating the users who change their
engine before typing and those who do it after. Considering that
triggering unwanted search is much more of a hassle than forcing one
additional click, I think that the current solution is a fair choice.
Personally, I'm on the fence about which solution I would prefer.
- Adam
Peter Kasting
This has problems of its own. Especially when the user has multiple
suggest-capable search engines, this quickly makes the dropdown box VERY
long -- which reduces its utility and usability greatly (wasn't the
whole point to be able to do an alternate search quickly? Now I need to
do a scan down through a long series of items to find what I want).
Also, in your example above, it's difficult to discern the difference
between "some text" and "some text" (in the two suggestion lists)
without thinking for a second to realize that one is a suggestion from
my current engine, and the other a suggestion from a different engine.
I suggest (no pun intended) that the original idea of putting just the
"search using x" options on the dropdown is a better tradeoff. The
incidence of searching with an alternate engine already seems low enough
to not dedicate tons of dropdown space to it, and I just don't think
that using suggested searches on that alternate engine is something we
need to support in the search box.
For that sort of edge-case user, some method (probably in an extension,
since I don't see this as valuable to most users) that lets them add
multiple search boxes to their toolbars, or bind a single shortcut key
to switch their default search engine, both seem like more powerful
solutions.
PK
Gervase Markham
> On the other hand, a user who conducts 60% of his searches on the
> default engine, 20% on another engine, and 20% on a third engine might
> be better served by buttons for those engines in the search box itself,
> if such buttons are easier to select.
Is there any way we can search using all (or a subset of) engines at
once, and present all the results? I.e., have more than one default, in
a sense?
If I do 50% of my searches using Google and 50% using Wikipedia, I'm not
going to lose sleep if every search I do is done on both and I get (for
example) an upper and lower pane with two sets of results.
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> I remember this already being discussed and it was refused. This
> behavior is indeed very handy in the use case you're describing but it
> can cause problems on some other occasions. Let's say there's already
> some text from previous searches in the field. Now, if I want to start a
> new search, I can't pick an engine before entering the search terms,
> because it would trigger the search using the old terms. For people that
> have a habit of picking the engine before typing it would be really
> frustrating.
Why is it bad to trigger a bogus search? It does the search, but you
ignore the results as you are still typing in the search box, then you
do your real search.
Gerv
Mike Shaver
> Why is it bad to trigger a bogus search? It does the search, but you
> ignore the results as you are still typing in the search box, then you
> do your real search.
It's bad because it's distracting, and because loading the search page
may lose information that the user is consulting in order to construct
the search.
Mike
dolphinling
> On the other hand, a user who conducts 60% of his searches on the
> default engine, 20% on another engine, and 20% on a third engine might
> be better served by buttons for those engines in the search box itself,
> if such buttons are easier to select.
What percent of users regularly (knowingly) use more than one search engine? Is
it worth complicating the UI for everyone to just help them? My guess is that
it's not, and this is extension material (though I'm probably biased, as I do
probably 98% of my searches through one engine) (also, it would make perfect
sense for mozcorp to develop the extension, and perhaps even link to it from
https://addons.mozilla.org/search-engines.php).
--
dolphinling
<http://dolphinling.net/>
Gervase Markham
> It's bad because it's distracting, and because loading the search page
> may lose information that the user is consulting in order to construct
> the search.
Good answer :-)
Gerv
Myk Melez
> What percent of users regularly (knowingly) use more than one search
> engine? Is it worth complicating the UI for everyone to just help them?
I don't know, but the more relevant question is how many users would use
alternate engines if it was easy to do so.
> My guess is that it's not, and this is extension material (though I'm
> probably biased, as I do probably 98% of my searches through one engine)
When it comes to Firefox's search box, I do virtually all my searches
using the default engine, but that's mostly because it isn't easy to
pick an alternate search engine for a particular search.
So when I want to search Amazon, Wikipedia, or eBay (two of which are
shipped by default as alternate search engines), I go to their sites and
use their in-page search forms.
I suspect that I'd do those searches via the search box if it was easy
to do so.
-myk
dolphinling
> dolphinling wrote:
>
>> What percent of users regularly (knowingly) use more than one search
>> engine? Is it worth complicating the UI for everyone to just help them?
>
> I don't know, but the more relevant question is how many users would use
> alternate engines if it was easy to do so.
Good point.
>> My guess is that it's not, and this is extension material (though I'm
>> probably biased, as I do probably 98% of my searches through one engine)
>
> When it comes to Firefox's search box, I do virtually all my searches
> using the default engine, but that's mostly because it isn't easy to
> pick an alternate search engine for a particular search.
>
> So when I want to search Amazon, Wikipedia, or eBay (two of which are
> shipped by default as alternate search engines), I go to their sites and
> use their in-page search forms.
>
> I suspect that I'd do those searches via the search box if it was easy
> to do so.
Hmm... I'm not sure about that for myself, but that may be because I only
commonly do information-finding type searches instead of product-finding or
anything else.
I have it set up with google as the default and wikipedia as one step down so I
can just hit ctrl+down to switch to it, but often I don't even bother because I
know wikipedia will be in the first few results anyway and I'll also get to see
other results with google.
So I guess the question then is how many people *regularly* use
amazon/ebay/etc., enough that they'd find the UI more useful than not (instead
of how many use those search engines currently).
--
dolphinling
<http://dolphinling.net/>
Myk Melez
> So I guess the question then is how many people *regularly* use
> amazon/ebay/etc., enough that they'd find the UI more useful than not
> (instead of how many use those search engines currently).
Right. And our experiences, while informative, are certainly far from
conclusive.
But it seems to me that we've already decided that alternate search
engines are popular enough--not just as potential default engines but
also for one-off searches--to justify shipping them with Firefox.
And if that's the case, then it's worth making them easy to use.
-myk