+1 to the idea of an easy to use filtering interface.

The example UI is a little confusing, with the search input above the filtering 
options, it also appears you have to re-submit the search after you add 
filtering options.
Looking at other sites, I see a common pattern for simple filtering (which 
compliments robust searching)

 - Obvious that a filter is being used.
 - Easy to clear filters
 - Single click to apply a filter

I see the example UI as just creating a UI around the solr syntax, but I think 
creating a more minimal UI and incorporating it in to / just below above the 
ticket listing header (like the Advanced filtering for browsing sf.net) is a 
better approach. It would be intuitive to the user and could auto-populate with 
only values that exist to be filtered. Avoiding typos in a label filter for 
example. 

-- 
Wayne Witzel III (@wwitzel3)
[email protected]
http://pieceofpy.com


On Tuesday, November 05, 2013 at 09:57 , Dave Brondsema wrote:

> Any opinions on this before implementation begins?
> 
> On 10/31/13 3:32 PM, Dave Brondsema wrote:
> > We'd like to develop a UI for filtering tickets as a simple alternative to 
> > using
> > solr syntax. This should be helpful for those that don't know solr syntax, 
> > and
> > easier than learning it, for the simple cases.
> > 
> > I did a quick in-browser mock of drop-downs for various fields, but it 
> > doesn't
> > look very clean, and it takes up a lot of room: 
> > http://screencast.com/t/uUL2VeLybg
> > 
> > Side note: existing elements in that area could be improved:
> > * move "showing X of Y" to after the tickets, alongside pagination, like we 
> > do
> > on other places
> > * move "show deleted tickets" to after search help button
> > * make search text box even a little bigger
> > 
> > Since we probably only would show filter choices for the fields that have 
> > their
> > column shown, I was thinking perhaps we could put the filtering as part of 
> > the
> > column header. This could save space by moving each drop-down filter into a
> > per-column dialog that is not shown by default. It's also contextually 
> > relevant
> > to associate the fields with the columns. I think this would end up very
> > similar to the auto-filter feature on most spreadsheets.
> > 
> > That would require more UI work for the dialog and its contents, filter 
> > icon in
> > header, etc. Clicking on the column header currently sorts the column, so 
> > we'd
> > have to see if that still made sense or not. I imagine the filters would 
> > append
> > new clauses to the solr query, but it might get real weird if we don't put 
> > in
> > the extra work to parse a given solr query to know what filtering is active.
> > https://github.com/evolvingweb/ajax-solr/ might be worth exploring. Also
> > separating the user-entered query from the filter query would help some but
> > still would require some parsing. Solr seems to support this concept of 2 
> > query
> > params, but I haven't used it myself
> > http://wiki.apache.org/solr/CommonQueryParameters#fq
> > 
> > Thoughts?
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dave Brondsema : [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
> http://www.brondsema.net : personal
> http://www.splike.com : programming
> <><



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