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Please DO NOT listen to this guy. This auto-focus to the search box misfeature absolutely ruins any page viewing navigation. For people who use up/down arrow

by ww520 14y ago

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. This auto-focus to the search box misfeature absolutely ruins any page viewing navigation. For people who use up/down arrow or pgup/pgdown keys to scroll down the page (which is pretty much all laptop users), this focus stealing misfeature would frustrate them to no end. I won't go back to any site that does this.

smilliken 14y ago
Is it still a misfeature on pages that fit on one screen, e.g. google.com, or (my own company's) mixrank.com? Isn't a better strategy to optimize for the common use-case?
- rapind 14y ago
  I think it makes sense on Google where that's all you're going to do (more than just a common use case, it's almost the ONLY use case, probably like five 9s). I don't think it makes sense on Amazon. A typical amazon user may browse around and explore outside of search. Maybe most of the time they will search, but there are no doubt other use cases like using the fancy nav. It's even possible that they want to encourage user's the browse around a bit instead of finding what they want and leaving right away.
enraged_camel 14y ago
I disagree completely. The fact that Amazon does not auto-focus to the search box annoys me greatly, since 99% of the time I find the items I'm looking for via search. Compared to Google, Youtube, etc. Amazon feels clunky.
- nowarninglabel 14y ago
  Then why don't you just search via Google? "site:amazon.com bank of bob" or even most of the time you can just add the word amazon to your search query "amazon bank of bob" and I get exactly what I'm searching for. To me you haven't made any case at all why others should have to suffer so you can have auto-focus on Amazon when your needs are already met elsewhere.
  - Legion 14y ago
    Things like this are why I have DuckDuckGo as my browser's default search engine. "!amazon thingamabob" (or just "!a thingamabob"). Way more convenient than going to the homepage and worrying about search auto-focus.
    - jamesjporter 14y ago
      My favorite thing about DDG is that at this point there are so many bang syntaxes defined that if I don't know the syntax for something, I can often just guess and half the time I get it right!
    - mixmastamyk 14y ago
      Firefox keyword search is more direct, though you have to define them yourself. See my comment above.
- mixmastamyk 14y ago
  Try keyword search on Firefox: "a foo" to search on amazon, "g foo" google, "i foo" imdb, "m foo" google maps, "w foo" wikipedia, "u foo" urbandictionary, etc... I have more but they are not public sites.
  - zorbo 14y ago
    Chrome automatically recognizes searches on sites, so that you can just type "ama[TAB]" in de URL bar, and it will give you a site-specific search straight in the URL bar (provided that "ama" auto-completes to "amazon.com" for you, naturally). This works for basically every site you've ever visited that has search functionality. It's pretty decent.
    - mixmastamyk 14y ago
      That's interesting, though I only care about a few sites, and prefer the brevity of the ff keywords. Sounds like the two could complement each other, like aliases and completion in a shell.
      - Maert 14y ago
        You can rename the search engine abbreviations as you like. I have "w" for wikipedia, "y" for youtube, "gm" for google maps, etc... This is THE feature of Chrome that I use constantly every day. It saves 5-10 seconds on each search you do every day. It adds up.
vxNsr 14y ago
More importantly it completely breaks the page for a page-reading program, meaning the site becomes significantly less accessible to disabled users. In fact the guide to accessible website design (don't remember where to find it now) specifically says NOT to autofocus to some "random" or arbitrary place on the page.
rplnt 14y ago
Not to mention any sort of single-key navigation. What is important though is that TAB should work and focus the important fields in the correct order.
revorad 14y ago
Please DO NOT listen to this guy. Steady on, soldier. I just asked a question.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ww520 14y ago
  Sorry. It's just a lot of websites have gone that route and it's really annoying. I didn't want Amazon to cave in to the seeming demand from users and wanted to present another view. Judging from the up-votes it seems this resonates with a lot of people.

by ww520 14y ago

smilliken 14y ago

Is it still a misfeature on pages that fit on one screen, e.g. google.com, or (my own company's) mixrank.com? Isn't a better strategy to optimize for the common use-case?

rapind 14y ago
I think it makes sense on Google where that's all you're going to do (more than just a common use case, it's almost the ONLY use case, probably like five 9s). I don't think it makes sense on Amazon. A typical amazon user may browse around and explore outside of search. Maybe most of the time they will search, but there are no doubt other use cases like using the fancy nav. It's even possible that they want to encourage user's the browse around a bit instead of finding what they want and leaving right away.

enraged_camel 14y ago

I disagree completely. The fact that Amazon does not auto-focus to the search box annoys me greatly, since 99% of the time I find the items I'm looking for via search. Compared to Google, Youtube, etc. Amazon feels clunky.

nowarninglabel 14y ago
Then why don't you just search via Google? "site:amazon.com bank of bob" or even most of the time you can just add the word amazon to your search query "amazon bank of bob" and I get exactly what I'm searching for. To me you haven't made any case at all why others should have to suffer so you can have auto-focus on Amazon when your needs are already met elsewhere.
- Legion 14y ago
  Things like this are why I have DuckDuckGo as my browser's default search engine. "!amazon thingamabob" (or just "!a thingamabob"). Way more convenient than going to the homepage and worrying about search auto-focus.
  - jamesjporter 14y ago
    My favorite thing about DDG is that at this point there are so many bang syntaxes defined that if I don't know the syntax for something, I can often just guess and half the time I get it right!
  - mixmastamyk 14y ago
    Firefox keyword search is more direct, though you have to define them yourself. See my comment above.
mixmastamyk 14y ago
Try keyword search on Firefox: "a foo" to search on amazon, "g foo" google, "i foo" imdb, "m foo" google maps, "w foo" wikipedia, "u foo" urbandictionary, etc... I have more but they are not public sites.
- zorbo 14y ago
  Chrome automatically recognizes searches on sites, so that you can just type "ama[TAB]" in de URL bar, and it will give you a site-specific search straight in the URL bar (provided that "ama" auto-completes to "amazon.com" for you, naturally). This works for basically every site you've ever visited that has search functionality. It's pretty decent.
  - mixmastamyk 14y ago
    That's interesting, though I only care about a few sites, and prefer the brevity of the ff keywords. Sounds like the two could complement each other, like aliases and completion in a shell.
    - Maert 14y ago
      You can rename the search engine abbreviations as you like. I have "w" for wikipedia, "y" for youtube, "gm" for google maps, etc... This is THE feature of Chrome that I use constantly every day. It saves 5-10 seconds on each search you do every day. It adds up.

vxNsr 14y ago

More importantly it completely breaks the page for a page-reading program, meaning the site becomes significantly less accessible to disabled users. In fact the guide to accessible website design (don't remember where to find it now) specifically says NOT to autofocus to some "random" or arbitrary place on the page.

rplnt 14y ago

Not to mention any sort of single-key navigation. What is important though is that TAB should work and focus the important fields in the correct order.

revorad 14y ago

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. Steady on, soldier. I just asked a question.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ww520 14y ago
Sorry. It's just a lot of websites have gone that route and it's really annoying. I didn't want Amazon to cave in to the seeming demand from users and wanted to present another view. Judging from the up-votes it seems this resonates with a lot of people.