[Web4lib] AJAX on library websites?

[Richard Wiggins]

The difference is glaring, if you follow carefully the behavior I described.

Go to tha GIT journals search.  Select the drop-down for Exact Match.  Type
"nature" into the search box.  A long list of articles magically appears in
a drop box.  On my screen (IE 6 on a Thinkpad running at 1024 x 768 with
normal fonts in a window about 800 x 600) the drop-down list of journals
appears magically -- and it obscures the Submit button.

If I want an exact match for the journal Nature, I do not want to see the
other titles appear by magic as I enter my exact search term.  The drop-down
list that magically appears BLOCKS the Submit button that I might click on,
if I saw it.  The interface forces me to go to the drop-down list and click
on Nature -- an extra step. There is only one journal whose name is exactly
Nature. (I personally knew enough to hit Enter and see what happened, which
was  that at that point the journals search did the exact match.)

Perhaps it might be useful to compare the behavior to a human interaction.
Let's say I walk up to the reference desk and say "Could you help me find
the journal Nature?"  No human would reply with a list of a dozen or more
titles that include that word.

Any time you add interactivity to a Web form, you risk confusion.  My credit
union tries to parse dollar amounts as I type them in.  I want to type, say,
750.00 and the JavaScript snippet emulates an ATM as you enter dollar
amounts, moving the digits around the decimal point.  It actually slows me
down.

/rich

On 12/17/05, Ross Singer <ross.singer at library.gatech.edu> wrote:
>
> On Dec 17, 2005, at 11:49 AM, Richard Wiggins wrote:
> > The Ga Tech journals search is also interesting. Again, I wonder if
> > there are usability implications. For instance, let's say I want to
> > look up the full text of a recent article in the journal Nature.(As a
> > totally random example.) So I go to
> > http://www.library.gatech.edu/search_locate/
> > electronic_journals.htmland I select Exact Match from the drop-down.
> > I type the word "Nature" On screen I see a drop-down list of a bunch
> > of journals with "nature" in their titles. That drop-down obscures
> > the Submit button.I want the exact match of "Nature" but I see in the
> > drop-down titles such as "FRACTALS AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL ON
> > THE COMPLEX GEOMETRY OF NATURE"... How is this an exact match? What
> > percent of people searching for "Nature" want that title?
> >
> > With a traditional, non-interactive search, I'd just click Submitand
> > get my exact match.
>
> As you do when you just type "nature" in the interactive search and hit
> "Enter" or "Tab" or "Escape" or mouse click.
>
> What's the difference?
>
> The point (attempted) here was to add (hopefully, useful) functionality
> without removing any functionality in the use case you present above.
>
> Yes, usability will ultimately tell us if it's as helpful as intended,
> but feedback has been positive.  I think /any/ attempts to help the
> user find items in our collection should be considered positive and can
> be tweaked and improved after implementation.
>
> -Ross.
>