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The issue identified during a usability study: When the search is invoked without parameters, it returns no results (participants expected it to return the full list of projects). This proved to be a blocker to a participant, he thought there are no projects available.
We will probably disappoint participant, but google also shows only text field and not all web pages from internet. We should refine UI to help users to understand what is expected from them, we surely won't list all kenai.com projects (from performance reasons).
This is not like google - we are not searching open internet, just a database of projects. Actually Kenai lists all the projects. So perhaps we could try to list all the project when empty field is entered. (Of course we should then somehow reduce the number of shown projects if there are too many results.) If not allowing this, there should be at least some feedback/message on user's attempt to do empty search. Together with issue 160251, this could make the search dialog easier to use for a newcomer.
There are 2 sides of this problem: 1) users expect to have some projects to choose from before the search is run 2) if the empty search is run, there need to be "some" results. The current behavior evokes there are no projects at all. First problem can be solved by collapsing the section with results and uncollapsing it only after the first search. Second problem needs to be solved by really presenting some search results .. i don't see any reasonable "workaround".
ad 1) Wouldn't be enough to just show "No search performed yet" instead of "No search results"? Let's plan to solve this for 6.8.
I would like to also point you at issue 162607 which speaks about presenting featured/new Kenai projects to the user.
Certainly for many people it would work. Hard to say whether it would make it absolutely clear, without usability-testing it again. Anyway, it'd be acceptable solution to me. If we later recognize it is not enough, we can always reopen the issue.
fixed in cdev
Integrated into 'main-golden', will be available in build *200906301400* on http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/nightly/ (upload may still be in progress) Changeset: http://hg.netbeans.org/main-golden/rev/520fede508a2 User: Jan Becicka <jbecicka@netbeans.org> Log: #165955: search in Open Kenai Project dialog behaves wrong
Is this really fixed? The second problem with empty search is not solved.
fixed in my local repository
Integrated into 'main-golden', will be available in build *200907311401* on http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/nightly/ (upload may still be in progress) Changeset: http://hg.netbeans.org/main-golden/rev/3309eb07cb63 User: Jan Becicka <jbecicka@netbeans.org> Log: #165955: search in Open Kenai Project dialog behaves wrong
fixed