Improvements to XSnippets: Search and Favorites

After a long time (3 months I guess) a new set of features has been implemented on OpenNTF XSnippets site.

In addition to a couple of bug fixes, we have implemented an extended search functionality, OpenSearch support and 'My Favorites' feature...

Search Improvements
We have added some usability enhancement to search. See the video.

First of all, if you click a letter or number key on the XSnippets site, search bar will be automatically activated now. This is probably better than clicking a thin search box. The second improvement is the type ahead in the search box. Each character you entered fires a FT search on the server side and will return possible matches in a type ahead format (thanks to Tim Tripcony). If you select anything here, you will skip the search results page and go to the snippet directly.

OpenSearch Support
OpenSearch is an open standard for cross-site searching. Today, many browsers are supporting OpenSearch feature.

OpenSearch has two basic functions. The first is to declare 'how to search in my site' meta information to other sites. The second is more exciting: You can also announce that 'You can search keywords in my site, use this url...'.

We have added a simple link to add XSnippet Search into your browser's search engines. To do this, search anything to go to results page and click the link on the top right corner.

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On Chrome and Firefox, you can also define a specific keyword for this search engine. Using keyword you can search XSnippets site from the address bar.

For Chrome, keyword can be entered on the "Add Search Engine" dialog when you click the link. To use the keyword, go to the address bar, type your keyword and press 'tab'. For Firefox, you should edit the keyword in the "Edit Search Engines" dialog. After you defined the keyword, type your keyword, a space and search terms into the address bar.

Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer also support keyword search.

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Chrome

Firefox

Internet Explorer

My Favorites
We have also added my favorite feature to XSnippets. In any snippet, you will see a large star on the top right corner.

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You have to be logged in to mark a snippet as a favorite. You can also see other persons that marked the same entry as favorite.

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Once you logged in, we are placing a cookie on your browser. So next time you visit the site, you can see your favorites even you are not authenticated.

You can see your favorites in the left menu and "My Favorites" page.

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Finally, you may use "Best rated XSnippets" view to mark snippets 'in-view'.

I hope you like the recent enhancements. I will explain some technical details later in my blog. We will also release the final database in the project page soon. Enjoy :)