When there is a lot of information on a page or a giant table – it’s nice to have a search function on there that just searches the page – quickly eliminating irrelevant information. It’s also nice when the page doesn’t refresh every time either. Page refreshes have to be the most annoying thing about the internet… among other things. No, pagination (splitting data up in several pages) isn’t good enough at times. Usability studies show that having a scoped search where it’s needed can be very helpful for visitors.
What really made me want to write about quicksearch is how it’s how hard it is to find good help, quickly. Especially when you’re in a jam. Except that in some strange cases someone magically appears to help you through your problems. I was working late on some code and needed a kick in the right direction. When Google doesn’t help, just email someone you don’t even know! This is exactly what I did.
I had been trying to get the search function to work on a page and I couldn’t get it to do exactly what I wanted. Not that it was difficult – but it was getting late and I was pretty worn out. Well, after searching and searching I decided that I’m going to email the guy who wrote the script. Not even 5 minutes later I already had a response to my question with the answer! I was so excited that the experience got me out of my blogging rut. So here I am.
Good help hard to find? Yes, but not in this case. Thanks Rik (www.rikrikrik.com)!
Rik made quicksearch.js – a JQuery plugin that does exactly what the name implies. Searches the page very quickly.