New search available

Some of you may have noticed that the search function has been upgraded.

Gone are the days of jumbled google results with the new one having a few additional filters thrown in for good measure.

My own view is that it still needs a little touch up in a couple of areas but has so far proved exceptionally useful to me at least.

If you see anything amiss please report it either in this post or on github.

Known issues (to me)

  1. Changing search terms does not carry over into a new search. (passed back)
  2. Using specifiers does not always produce the required results eg "ballscrew" can produce "ball screw" The same goes if you wish to EXCLUDE some results. (resolved)
  3. Known counts are not always correct. This is more apparent if you search for your user name. (They have improved a lot since yesterday)
  4. The date references are incomplete only going back so far to around 2015 (Thanks robin)
  5. Needs to be more obvious about the page you are currently on (colour scheme) (resolved)
  6. Does not always refocus to top of page for next set of results.

It needs to have the option to set a start- and end-date for a search.

...R

Hello, let me answer a couple of points:

@ballscrewbob

  1. what do you mean?
  2. it is now possible to use quotes and dashes to search for an exact term or to exclude a term from the search. Deployed like 5 minutes ago, it should roll out quickly to everyone
  3. results counts are to be taken with a grain of salt. The algorythm is more emphatic on speed and accuracy for the first results, at the cost of a lower accuracy for results at the end of the tail
  4. sounds like a bug. Can we have more details? what were you searching?
  5. What do you mean?
  6. You're right, we'll work on this

@Robin2

what's the use case? what were you searching for?

matteosuppo:
Hello, let me answer a couple of points:

First things first -- why didn't you introduce this change rather than leaving it to @ballscrewbob - moderators should not be expected to do the work of the developers or to be the customer-face of the development team.

  1. it is now possible to use quotes and dashes to search for an exact term or to exclude a term from the search. Deployed like 5 minutes ago, it should roll out quickly to everyone

Why was the search tool rolled out before that feature was included?

what's the use case? what were you searching for?

Sometimes it is useful to be able to find something that you think was said in (say) February or March. Google has this feature. This search tool is a waste of time unless it can do better than Google.

...R

I only mentioned it Robin as I saw it had been rolled out and I was under the impression it was another week away.

It wasnt Matteos fault at all.

I was just trying to get ahead on a bug list now it is LIVE.

EDIT.
Robin if you wish to CP your PM comments to me into here feel free as they offer Matteo some extra context.

  1. Category can lock up leaving only one option to select from.
  2. Oldest first does not work but may be rlated to one or more of the other issues. (actually works as a one shot deal then locks in.)

Item 7 can be sort of countered by changing FORUM board but it is clunky at best and not always reliable.

ballscrewbob:
I only mentioned it Robin as I saw it had been rolled out and I was under the impression it was another week away.

It wasnt Matteos fault at all.

I don't agree.

"Fault" may not the best word but I have said many times previously that the development team should make themselves visible to us and let us know in advance of changes to the system - even (heaven forbid) seek our advice about what changes would be useful to us.

If Matteos is not the lead developer for this change and if it should have been introduced a different member of the team then I apologise to Matteos.

...R

ballscrewbob:
Robin if you wish to CP your PM comments to me into here feel free as they offer Matteo some extra context.

Not sure what you had in mind, and some of them may have been dealt with but here are the contents of the messages


First some comments on my experience ...

I tried searching for "several things" Robin2 in the hope that it would find Several Things at a Time

It didn't.

It did find some Threads that referred to my tutorial.

Initially my search term was several things Robin2 i.e. no quotes and I noticed that one of the links it showed only had the word "things". I added the quotes hoping that it would insist on finding both words together but it made no difference. I have experienced this behaviour (i.e. treating each word separately) on other Fora and I find it intensely frustrating.

The default order seems to be Newest First (I did not change it) but its first result is from 2015 and the second from 2020

And now some more general comments ...

This whole thing is a complete waste of time unless it is better than a search using Google (or Duck Duck Go which I normally use).

Limiting the search to specific sections of the Forum may not be as useful as it seems - it assumes that the person already knows where the item is. I think I would rarely use that.

Limiting the search to a period between two dates would be very useful - especially if you are trying to find something that was posted recently, or something that you know was not recent.

I think I would find it useful to be able to limit a search to posts by a specific user.


One more thing that I had forgotten to check.

I did another search on serial input basics and the first result included the word "asynchronous"

I then did a search on serial input basics -asynchronous which I was hoping would exclude results containing the word "asynchronous". But it did not.

Being able to exclude words is very important and is a standard Google feature.


It should be a simple matter to make the Prev 12345 Next line appear at the top of the page as well as at the bottom

Another couple of thoughts from me ...

It would probably be useful to have a language filter - I searched for nRF24L01 and the first item was in Spanish which would be no interest to me. Conversely, a Spanish speaker might like to restrict his/her search to that language.

And it would also probably be useful to be able to limit the results to one item per Thread - getting several results from the same Thread can make it difficult to find a Thread that has a different perspective on the problem


If you care to check you will see that I have omitted some stuff. Let me know if you also want me to include it - I suspect you won't.

...R

Could someone please provide a click by click explanation of how to do a search for the word delaymicroseconds sorted in order of earliest first, because I am blowed if I can work out how to do it

Having done a search, how do I then search for another term ?

UKHeliBob:
Could someone please provide a click by click explanation of how to do a search for the word delaymicroseconds sorted in order of earliest first, because I am blowed if I can work out how to do it

Doesn't work for me either - I don't think the date filter is functional. If I pick a different forum, the query is refreshed, but changing the date filter is ignored.

Sounds like the old UK car industry - leave the testing to the customer.

With Google readily available I remain to be convinced that work spent on this custom search facility is time well spent. And if the damn thing doesn't work then it is certainly a waste of time.

...R

Doing a search and the & shows as &

Using Arduino > Installation & Troubleshooting

Too much escaping of HTML tags?

Hello everyone, first of all please allow me to quickly introduce myself: I’m Isabela, I work as User Interaction Designer in the Design Team of Arduino. Our team is quite new and we are working daily with the Dev Team to deliver a better experience to you guys that you’ll be hopefully seeing very soon. Thanks especially to @ballscrewbob for introducing the new search and to @Robin2 for the followup!

We are aware there are a lot of things that needs enhancing and I can promise we’ll communicate better with you and bring you onboard to test new features. We are a small team and we are working very hard to always iterate and deliver as much as we can.

A small disclaimer: As you may imagine, Arduino has years and years of data not only from the Forum but from Playground and other kinds of Documentation too. We are reorganising all this content and moving it to a new platform to make it quicker to find. We are using a top-notch software to scrape all this content as fast as possible so you can find them in the search. The whole process can take some time so we really appreciate your patience. Thank you so much for the valid feedback you’ve been giving us in this thread, it’s priceless.

Some of your feedback was already implemented and some are in line to be published very soon. I’ll try my best to answer the other ones as much as I can :slight_smile:

The default order seems to be Newest First (I did not change it) but its first result is from 2015 and the second from 2020

Actually the default sorting is by relevance, which is calculated by the algorithm so you can find the most relevant result to your query within the first results of the page.

Limiting the search to specific sections of the Forum may not be as useful as it seems - it assumes that the person already knows where the item is. I think I would rarely use that. Limiting the search to a period between two dates would be very useful - especially if you are trying to find something that was posted recently, or something that you know was not recent. I think I would find it useful to be able to limit a search to posts by a specific user.

Noted! Both of them are actually very common features, but not as easy as it seems to implement. We are digging into them to find a way to make them possible, while respecting everyone’s data and privacy.

It would probably be useful to have a language filter - I searched for nRF24L01 and the first item was in Spanish which would be no interest to me. Conversely, a Spanish speaker might like to restrict his/her search to that language.

I guess this was a small bug that was already fixed. The language is also bound to how the content is organised as I mentioned before, WIP :slight_smile:

And it would also probably be useful to be able to limit the results to one item per Thread - getting several results from the same Thread can make it difficult to find a Thread that has a different perspective on the problem

Good call! We’ll dig into it.

The following is a quick tutorial dedicated to @UKHeliBob and @wildbill :slight_smile:

  1. In the top search bar type your query and press enter

  2. If you are doing the search from a forum page, you’ll be taken to the forum results tab where the results are sorted by relevance.


  3. You can change the sorting as you prefer


  4. If you need to make a new search just hover the search input field and delete the query


  5. Just type your next query and press enter and you’re set!

Let me know if something is still not clear or if I can help in any other way
Best,
Isabela

@i-freire

Thanks for introducing yourself and the follow ups.

So nice to see an Arduino presence and hope it will be a long and fruitful one.

Bob.

Hello Isabela, welcome aboard

I think that it would be helpful if the search was opened in a new tab in the browser rather than leaving the current page, or maybe offer the option by right clicking on the search icon. As it stands, if you want to do a search whilst reading a thread then in order to leave the thread open you need to duplicate the page before doing the search.

On a different subject, I see that you are

working daily with the Dev Team to deliver a better experience

One thing that would provide me with a better experience would be for the long standing problem with Alerts being fixed being fixed

Welcome Isabella.

...R

I did not want to undermine my "welcome" with a complaint so I have separated them.

Just now I entered several things into the search box at the top of the page and it gave me a page titled Arduino search with just a blank white area in the middle.

That does not inspire confidence. The development and testing should not happen on the live system.

Also, I just typed several things site:arduino.cc into DuckDuckGo and the Thread Several Things at a Time was top of the list as befits the fact that it has been (Read 547320 times)

...R

Check again Robin as it just worked great here.