bluegaspode;585252 Wrote:
>
> I'd also be interested in how often people really use a search
> function. If it's rare then tapping through some menus might be OK ?
> Actually personally I never use the search function in daily life at
> all !
> If I have an artist or album in my mind I rather go to these menus and
> use the menus - this for me is faster than trying to enter a search
> string.
>
I think this is related to the library size and how easy the search is
to access. In a smaller library, browsing is probably fine while it
takes a lot longer in a larger library where you have to scroll through
long lists.
To make search usable, you really need instant feedback when typing. If
you need to enter the whole artist name it's going to take to long but
if it's enough to enter 4 characters and get a list of 8 matching
artists where you can easily just select one of them it's going to get
a lot more useful.
This is why the spotlight function on a Mac is excellent, from the
beginning I rarely used it at all but now it's the main way to start
applications which isn't directly accessible in the dock. The same
thing has also happened on iPhone and iPad, earlier I tried to find an
app by sliding through the pages but now I just click twice on the home
button and start to enter the application name in the search box.
This is a main difference between iPeng and Squeezepad, but only as
long as you don't have the global search feature activated in iPeng.
The key is the instant feedback when entering the search string which
makes it possible to stop writing before you have entered the whole
artist/album/track name you are searching for. With SqueezePad and
SqueezePlay you don't know when you have entered enough characters to
get a list that's short enough for manual selection, the result is that
usually you enter more characters than needed.
This is also why LazySearch on the Classic/Boom/Transporter player is
loved and the built-in search function is pretty useless, with
LazySearch you can just enter a few characters and instantaneously get
a short list of matching entries and you know you can stop writing when
the list is short enough to do a manual selection from it.
--
erland
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer
helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum
and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always
appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate))
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