Improve navigation & Searching

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molitar
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 10:54 pm

Improve navigation & Searching

Post by molitar »

Currently navigation for finding an anime that you don't know exact spelling of you have to keep hitting next next next next.. repeatedly and have no clue or idea how many pages their is.

I. Show total number of pages

II. Improve Navigation (couple of methods that would help)

Code: Select all

 A. Use navigation like animenfo where you can select by the first 3
 letters to find the one your wanting like H2 ... HAK.

 B. Use navigation like manganews when browsing releases. Instead of
 next it will show 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 and we can click on any of these to
 skip around to find the filename we are looking for much faster.
 Example: if I am looking for Himitsu I click on H than see their is 10
 pages of Himitsu I will than know that for HI I will need to try page 5.
 Click on page 5 and see I need to go to page 6. The method you use I
 have to click next 6 total times and I don't even have a clue how many
 clicks it will take it could have 28 pages for all I know.
III. Search with regex so if we don't know proper spelling we can do a
search for something like h?m* to find filenames like Himitsu. Before
this did not matter because I could list the entire anime letter than do a
partial search in the browser itself until I located the anime I was
looking for. But now with the limited listing search needs expanding.

IV. Advanced Search does not list all filenames it finds. The next page link is missing from it so not able to do partial filename searches in it either.


Until navigation is improved I am having to use AOM which updates everytime I run it which I know is using alot of bandwidth to update the database. But it's the only method for full partial filename searches that actually works.
epoximator
AniDB Staff
Posts: 379
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:05 am

Post by epoximator »

I. and II. is interesting, as i've said before

III. http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl?s ... rch=%22h?m i blame rar for not writing docu

IV. this page was limited intentionally. _i_ would have nothing against making it "scrollable", though.
PetriW
AniDB Staff
Posts: 1522
Joined: Sat May 24, 2003 2:34 pm

Re: Improve navigation & Searching

Post by PetriW »

molitar wrote:Until navigation is improved I am having to use AOM which updates everytime I run it which I know is using alot of bandwidth to update the database. But it's the only method for full partial filename searches that actually works.
Actually unless it does a full dump update every time you start it I'd guess it uses less than 200kb to do its daily update.

As aom doesn't use all that web markup it has quite a bit less overhead.
hhaamu
Posts: 84
Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2005 7:59 am

Re: Improve navigation & Searching

Post by hhaamu »

molitar wrote:III. Search with regex so if we don't know proper spelling we can do a
search for something like h?m* to find filenames like Himitsu.
Nitpicking here, but that's not a regexp, that's globbing. If it were a regexp, it would match "hm", "hmmmmmm", "m", "mmmmm" and "". (zero or one instances of 'h' and zero to n instances of m, greedy).
molitar
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 10:54 pm

Re: Improve navigation & Searching

Post by molitar »

hhaamu wrote:Nitpicking here, but that's not a regexp, that's globbing. If it were a regexp, it would match "hm", "hmmmmmm", "m", "mmmmm" and "". (zero or one instances of 'h' and zero to n instances of m, greedy).
No their is alot more power than just that in regex. Example below on how question mark is used.

? The question mark indicates there is 0 or 1 of the previous expression. For example, "colou?r" matches both color and colour.

Now you see how regex can help locate a file when you don't know exact spelling?
hhaamu
Posts: 84
Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2005 7:59 am

Re: Improve navigation & Searching

Post by hhaamu »

I know perfectly well what a regexp is. I was just saying that the example you used was globbing, and definitely would not match "himitsu" if it were used as a regexp.
exp
Site Admin
Posts: 2438
Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2002 9:42 pm
Location: Nowhere

Post by exp »

epoximator wrote:I. and II. is interesting, as i've said before

III. http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl?s ... rch=%22h?m i blame rar for not writing docu

IV. this page was limited intentionally. _i_ would have nothing against making it "scrollable", though.
I agree, I. and II. might be interesting.
The question is how this can be done in a fast way. We could think about doing the separate counting query (which would be needed IIRC) in a caching manner. The other idea should be cachable as well as I see it.

III. real regexp would be more expensive and I don't think many users would ever make use of that.

IV. I don't see a problem with making it scrollable. We could use the users's entries-per-page setting, as we're doing on other pages.

BYe!
EXP
Boino
Posts: 37
Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:03 pm
Location: Norway

Post by Boino »

nice idea all of them.. but the file thing could go into a seperate interest search... because the anime list is for animes that you acualy know of.. you could make a seperate "interest" search witch could include filename..
but the things i would like to add also is the main text,intro or what you call it, pluss reviews. because if you're searching for an anime with a specific content like demons or dragons or whatever you're taste, it is probably written there...?
Der Idiot
AniDB Staff
Posts: 1227
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2003 10:19 am

Post by Der Idiot »

or you could just use categories...
Boino
Posts: 37
Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:03 pm
Location: Norway

Post by Boino »

well,it has improved from last time i tried it.... never mind then
OnegaiNL
Posts: 80
Joined: Wed Oct 20, 2004 4:38 pm

Post by OnegaiNL »

Here is something I'm thinking of regarding searching;

Some series have several names which makes it harder to find it in your mylist, so I'd have to search for the correct name.

Example:
Great Detectives Poirot and Marple

In my mylist I would press the letter 'G' to find and modify stuff, but it shows up with the following name: 'Agatha Christie no Meitantei Poirot to Marple' so I won't find it at 'A'.

A nice thing would be a 'search in mylist' function.
There are 2 ways;

1) Put a searchbox on the mylist page which will search only on your mylist.

2) A dropdown menu below the Search button which will narrow where it will be searching in.

Dropdown-menu could contain the following things:
Search in:
- everything (Default)
- anime
- groups
- producers
- mylist
Neko-Musume
Posts: 56
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 2:31 pm

Post by Neko-Musume »

OnegaiNL wrote:Here is something I'm thinking of regarding searching;

Some series have several names which makes it harder to find it in your mylist, so I'd have to search for the correct name.

Example:
Great Detectives Poirot and Marple
I find this quite interesting. I think that a more ambiguous search engine could come in very handy. As it is, it's not very accepting for possible mistakes or even alternative search terms. ATM you practically have to know the title in proper syntax to accurately search for it, which kinda negates the search qualities of search.

for instance "links angel" brings up nothing, so does "knights dragon"or "star outlaw" or "go no ikaru", but reverse the word order and whadyaknow
molitar
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 10:54 pm

Post by molitar »

So true many times because the series I was searching for I was using english name for I wasn't able to find it. Doing the same search in the AOM Client found it just fine. After that I would than see the Japanese version of the name and I would than be able to find it on the website. Search really needs improving.. Also we need the count or something because next next next is a royal pain if your looking for something like ru.. since ru will be at the end of all the next clicks.
AlienMind
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:26 pm

Post by AlienMind »

OnegaiNL: I'm particularly interested in searching the description text or "body" or "default: search all" in a dropdown.
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