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Congratulations on the beta launch! I am all for privacy-friendly search engines. My 2-cents is default to the familiar list view for search results. The curre

by j0e1 5y ago

Congratulations on the beta launch! I am all for privacy-friendly search engines. My 2-cents is default to the familiar list view for search results. The current card-view makes it cumbersome to navigate (horizontal and vertical scroll) and scanning screen-width end-to-end. And with my penchant to serially browse results, it can result in me over-spending time to find what I need. Also, it would force you to have a tighter ranking of results. The current view could still be an option.

richardsocher 5y ago
Yea. We debated this one for a while. There's a "regression to the mean" type of thing going on where every other search engine in the last 20 years just looks like a Google knockoff. We found that many different types of users love the new layout. It allows you zoom into one dimension of your search, e.g. lots of Reddit results or Medium articles and then also quickly skip to the next. It will work well on mobile too (though we're focused on desktop for now) where many users are used to scrolling left/right and up/down in e.g. Instagram. Depending on your input device, it can be more or less intuitive: Worst case is folks with a single scroll wheel mouse. There you need to use shift+scroll wheel to move horizontally (that actually works in every app and OS). With trackpads and touch screens it's a lot easier. For some the layout is busy but especially developers told us they like the higher information density a lot and can avoid opening 20 different tabs to find what they're looking for. That being said, I understand that it will take some time to adjust to something new and a less-Google-y future.
- Fauntleroy 5y ago
  The problem is that the majority of users will likely bounce right off of such a foreign interface and never come back. Personally, I won't even consider this search engine until there's a less chaotic way to view the results.
- techbio 5y ago
  I understand the concept, but there have been several search engines that return a richer UI, the name "Clusty" comes to mind among others, and Google did not invent the relevance-sorted list, just [famously] improved relevancy.

by j0e1 5y ago

richardsocher 5y ago

Yea. We debated this one for a while. There's a "regression to the mean" type of thing going on where every other search engine in the last 20 years just looks like a Google knockoff. We found that many different types of users love the new layout. It allows you zoom into one dimension of your search, e.g. lots of Reddit results or Medium articles and then also quickly skip to the next. It will work well on mobile too (though we're focused on desktop for now) where many users are used to scrolling left/right and up/down in e.g. Instagram. Depending on your input device, it can be more or less intuitive: Worst case is folks with a single scroll wheel mouse. There you need to use shift+scroll wheel to move horizontally (that actually works in every app and OS). With trackpads and touch screens it's a lot easier. For some the layout is busy but especially developers told us they like the higher information density a lot and can avoid opening 20 different tabs to find what they're looking for. That being said, I understand that it will take some time to adjust to something new and a less-Google-y future.

Fauntleroy 5y ago
The problem is that the majority of users will likely bounce right off of such a foreign interface and never come back. Personally, I won't even consider this search engine until there's a less chaotic way to view the results.
techbio 5y ago
I understand the concept, but there have been several search engines that return a richer UI, the name "Clusty" comes to mind among others, and Google did not invent the relevance-sorted list, just [famously] improved relevancy.