Redesign search UI

[artfulrobot]

Nextcloud's search user interface is baffling, unexpected and confusing.

If I'm in an app that is presenting me a long list of things such that I need to search it, I click search and type my query. What you normally get in these situations is a filtered list of thing you were focussed on.

Instead, what I get is:

• the thing I want to search for loading in the background, but not being able to see the results to determine whether my query has been successful because the search interface is in the foreground, covering it up.
• a distracting list of other things that you weren't looking for that jumps around due to the fact that all the different searches load at different times, so that even if you try to click on something, often it shifts and your click lands elsewhere.
• a load of buttons, some of which are drop-downs to apply filters ("Places" is where you find all sorts of entities) others of which are normal buttons that affect some change.
• The Filter in current view button seems to really mean: close this pop-up, since the filter has already been applied anyway. But once you click that and you can see your filtered list there's no indication that you are now looking at a filtered list, and when you click Search again, you can't edit your search, your search is removed, gaslighting you into thinking there never was a search, but then your unfiltered view appears again which you can get back to by closing the pop-up.

This is very confusing. Not to labour the point too much, but here's the use-case that tipped me over the edge into making this suggestion here: I (admin) needed to check something on Molly's user account.

• I went to Users.
• Since Molly was not listed (there's lots of users), I clicked Search and typed Molly
• the UI jumped around for a while, changing size as different results loaded.
• I got results for Files, Conversations, Events.
• Under Conversations I saw a simple entry "Molly", so instinctively I clicked that before realising that was the wrong thing and then having to navigate back to Users and start over.
• Then I noticed a People filter. Ah, maybe Molly is a person. I clicked that and a searchable list came up. But re-entering Molly in there made the list go blank.
• Then I thought I'd try Places. Why I'm clicking Places to find a user, I don't know, but sure enough, at the bottom of the long list of options under Places, was Users. So I clicked Users.
• No matching results ... ?!!
• Despite the fact that in the dulled-out background I can see the user Molly has indeed been found.
• Finally, I realise that what I needed to do was to close the search UI. Normally, cancelling e.g. with × or Escape would cancel the search, but in Nextcloud it's a way to apply your search and get to the results.

Searching apps is even weirder. The "Apps" app now opens in "discover" view. But if you search while in this view, it doesn't find anything. However if you search while in a different filter, e.g. "Featured" or "Disabled" - really any of them except "discover", it works and you can discover apps!

I feel like a better, more understandable, search experience would be:

• click search, get a search box that does not obstruct the view.
• as you type, your view updates showing the effects of your filter.
• if I like the filtered view I can now get on with using the app, and the search UI will show that my query is in effect.
• there's a cancel button on the search UI for when I want to clear that search.
• As a bonus feature, the compact search UI may show me something like: [Search elsewhere]: [42 Files], [3 Contacts], [2 Conversations] ... where clicking "search elsewhere" might give a full screen overlay like what we have now, perhaps, and clicking "42 files" would show that overlay but just showing Files. Importantly, this part of the UI would not cause layout shift while loading.

I feel like this would build on the standard expectations from search, building confidence and making users feel it's fast and efficient, while still surfacing other content.

I :heart: nextcloud, and am posting these thoughts as a contribution to improving it. I'm grateful for all the work that has been put in, for all the code shared, for the community etc.

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[solracsf]

Give also a try to https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/thesearchpage

[artfulrobot]

@solracsf that is a separate app that implements another UI to the global/unified search. It's not dissimilar to the pop-up. The problem with the interface is that a frequent use case is to need to search the thing you're looking at: contacts if on contacts, users if on users, files - within currently shown dir, in files.

[solracsf]

I'm not saying that it fixes server problems, it's just an alternative. Having filters, and presenting results in a dedicated page, our users have widely adopted it. 👌

[BloodyIron]

Honestly the Search was way better before the first time they overhauled it into a pull-down menu style. The devs decided they wanted to overhaul that same limited-space pull-down menu, while ignoring people like myself who need to deal with very large result lists.

The latest search functionality, as fast as it is, still leaves me wanting and completely without a usable method for when I'm dealing with very large amounts of results. And that's a lot of the time, so it's pretty useless to me when I need to do that.

I cannot fathom why the search functionality CANNOT have a "full screen" mode (as in the full display within the nextCloud GUI) like it was BEFORE the FIRST search overhaul like 4-5-ish years ago (I don't remember when it was reliably).

Can we PLEASEEEE have the search functionality made actually useful for those of us who deal with very large amounts of results and files to search for? How it is now gives me barely any space to work and frankly it's mostly a pain in the ass to work with. I shouldn't have to click a hyperlink just to expand to only show a handful more of results when I could be dealing with hundreds of results. That's completely a pain and useless to me.

It's completely reasonable to EXPECT nextCloud instances to deal with hundreds of thousands of files (example of very large count of content to search for) and having to relegate results to 5-7 scale before hitting a link to show yet another 5-7 is completely ignoring very realistic use-cases for nextCloud.

I may try the app that @solracsf refers to here, but I shouldn't have to add yet-another-app to regain functionality that was taken away from us with ZERO equivalent alternative presented (this happened for the Photos app years ago too but that's another story).

[artfulrobot]

Here's a mockup of the sort of thing I think might be an improvement.

For those who can't access the image visually: The image shows three overlapping screenshots of a typical Users administration view.

The first screenshot is just showing that the search icon is clickable (as it is now) but that when you click it, the user interface expands as shown in the 2nd screenshot: the users list has shifted down, and a tinted search bar appears in the gap, linked to the search icon which is now highlighted (e.g. aria-pressed + visually clear). In this panel you can see a normal text input with search icon, with "needle" entered in. The original user list is now showing only 2 entries because "needle" has been applied. The search panel has an "Advanced Search" button showing, and a note explains: this could open a pop-up or separate page, similar to the global/unified search (or the search page app). The search panel also has the words "Elsewhere: 123 Files, 3 Contacts, 4 Conversations..." and arrows explain that these could be links that boot you into the advanced search with that type pre-selected, as a shortcut.

The third screenshot takes the idea further, to demonstrate the idea that given this UI, it would - if it were to be useful - be possible to extend the search panel by another row and expose app-specific filters, with examples mocked up showing as: Quota [Less than] (as a drop-down) [ 5GB ] (text entry box) and similarly: Last login [After] [23 May]. This is just an additional idea; the main point I'm making is just a UI change on the existing functionality, which should be the focus of this issue as far as I'm concerned.