search field focus

[pcicman]

Sorry, i think this new documentation system is step back.

All developers in our company aren't able to found required things in it easily, and to get them is always a long, long way, compared to old documentation style.

I'm not speaking about changing it back to old style (which will be probably the best for all people i know), but, wouldn't it be possible to focus search field automatically, when page is loaded?? (I think, this is not a big deal).

Thanks!

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

Focusing the search box is probably not a good idea. It hijacks any keystrokes (such as "/" for page searching in Firefox). It also suggests itself as a band-aid, rather than a solution to whatever problem is trying to be solved.

Perhaps patches to improve whatever problems you are seeing with the documentation would be more helpful to everybody here?

In any case, -1 from me on this change, I think.

[pcicman]

I agree with you, "/" (find on on page) was very useful with old documentation. But NOW! most of documentation pages are split into subsections, and i think "/" doesn't make sense anymore, because probably thing which you are looking for is hidden somewhere in documentation structure.

Personally i see this like a big problem - documentation is not good enough anymore (now i mean the structure, not the content). The quickest way for peoples around me is using google.com, type in what they are looking for and see the result (documentation is now reindexed by google), so it founds "good results sometimes". But, before 2 weeks - no way to find NOTHING at all, all results in google ended up with ?PHPSESID=.... (??? php?) and pointed into old (non existing) urls.

Normally i'm not a "usability improvements like guy", but i have to say - documentation usability for me: -1.

[Gary Wilson]

I agree with Malcolm that automatic focus is not a good idea. Focus would make sense on a page dedicated to search, but not here. Also, Adrian has recently refactored the documentation index page, making things easier to find.