New Thoughts on Advanced Search

Fellow blogger and Newfangled employee Chris Butler turned me on to an article from Boxes and Arrows, entitled "Advancing Advanced Search." Until recently, the advanced searching capabilities of a given site was hidden behind small text link near the general site-wide search widget.

Personally, I've always been intimidated by the term "advanced search." Do I need a special degree or training to utilize this function? Is there a secret hand shake involved? My fears were relieved when I began using the progressive search filtering capabilities of eBay and the advanced search options of two stock photo sites that I frequent. Advanced Search suddenly wasn't so scary (it also turns out that the monster under my bed was just a pile of old socks).

The most interesting solution to advanced searching that I read about in the Boxes and Arrows article is the "progressive disclosure of functionality" method. Instead of a single, complicated page of advanced search options, progressive disclosure breaks the search into understandable units and gives each to the user when they ask for it. It's a sure bet that I'll be bugging our project managers to keep this kind of functionality in mind when they're specing the next content-rich site.