Two Search Bugs Uncovered

[slvr_phoenix]

I actually used the forum's Search tool today and uncovered two bugs.

1) Do a search for common terms like AMD or CPU in the Hardware section and it tells you "No topics or posts met your search criteria". I highly doubt that in all of the Hardware section there are no posts with CPU in them. :mrgreen: Could the search be hitting an overflow error?

2) When the Search actually does work and you get your nice list of search results, you find another bug. If you mouseover any row's contents in the Topics column besides just changing the color of the text, it also increases the font size. No where else (that I've seen anyway) in the forum does it change the font size on a mouseover.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

There not bugs, they're 'features'

 

[steve_sa]

Due to performance reasons, search is limited to 4 char words or more. This is actually standard in mySQL settings.

So there are two options:
(a) reduce min. word searched to 3
or
(b) put out a notice that we did not search 3 letter words.

I like some feedback on this. I am leery about reducing min. search word size, since that dramatically impacts search performance (much bigger number of words need to be indexed).

Note that TOF (old forum) had severly reduced search functionality, by forcing one to choose one of 10 sections to search and then defaulted to searching one week. Forumz on the other hand, searches the whole hardware section in one shot. There are however compromises to be made to make this happen, and min. word size is it.

The other bug with font size is minor. I will have it fixed in the next release.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

I really can't see people searching for "AMD" or "CPU" alone. The results could be about anything. It would help to have some information like "Please redefine your search using more than 3 characters" instead of no topics found.

 

[Jake_Barnes]

It would help to have some information like "Please redefine your search using more than 3 characters" instead of no topics found.

Good suggestion, if it can be done :?:

 

[steve_sa]

Yes, let's do that first. Good idea, Ned. Tell people what is going on and why they are not getting results (or not what they think they should get, in case of multiple keywords, some less than 4 chars).

Then later we can think about it, perhaps introduce a limited dictionary of 3 word letters (amd, etc.) into the mix, or go to three letter indexing as a general rule.

Good way to start.

 

[dhlucke]

You stealing my ideas again?!

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Actually, I'd still prefer that the word size be reduced to 3 chars because if, for example, you searched for "AMD SKT 939 A64 CPU" you'll still end up with zilch. There's just waaaaaay too many very important three letter keywords and common abbreviations.

Yes, in TOF, the search was limited. I'd have to not use the default time length. (Usually putting it at one year works fine.) And yes, you had to be intelligent enough to know that if you're searching for a CPU post you should probably look in the CPU forum instead of all of the hardware section. But with a little user intelligence it worked.

Where as missing so many highly important keywords because they're only three letters long doesn't work nearly as well. I'd much rather see TOF's single forum limit than TNF's three char limit.

If there weren't so many highly important three letter words I'd probably see it differently, but there are, so...

 

[Ned_Flanders]

Yeah, the min search would have to go down to three chars.

 

[steve_sa]

New release http://forumz.tomshardware.com/community/ftopicp-364534.html#364534

 

[slvr_phoenix]

"The topic or post you requested does not exist"

 

[steve_sa]

The beta section was removed and its content was moved to 'forumz- other discussions'. Normally, there would be a 'moved' indicator, but since the section removed, that is not the case.

Here's the thread: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/community/-ftopict14455.html