[Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site

[Simon Willison]

The best advice I have ever seen on search engine usability is in Steve 
Krug's excellent book "Don't Make Me Think". There are two possible 
options for a search interface (apologies for the poor ASCII art):

Search: |________| |Go!|

or

|________| |Search|

Any other wording will cause people to have to stop and think, which is 
bad. Additional options etc are fine, but they should be hidden away on 
the advanced search page. The labels above are particularly important - 
the single word search MUST be included and the action word "Go!" should 
be used on teh button only if the word "Search" has already been used.

I would suggest a possible third way that makes use of a snippet of 
javascript, based on a modification of the first method shown above: put 
the word Search /in/ the search box (greyed out slightly) and have it 
disappear when the user first focuses on the box. Using the labels.js 
technique[1], this can be achieved without making the interface more 
confusing for users with javascript disabled.

All usability advice should be taken as guidelines rather than absolute 
rules, but in this case the guideline is such a good once I've never 
seen any reason to deviate from it[1].

Cheers,

Simon
http://simon.incutio.com/

[1] Real nit-pickers may notice my blog uses "Search Site" rather than 
just "Search". Rules are made to be broken ;)