Eric
Posts: 17317
Joined: 10/10/2003 From: Seattle, WA Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RandyAboutWine This was a creative approach to solving the "Margaux problem." I used it to enter wines from a recent WineBid purchase, as well as a few test cases. quote:
...the autocomplete dropdowns order by the overall holdings It usually did well at putting my selection on top of the list. But when it doesn't, it can be hard to find the desired wine because they aren't alphabetical or grouped by producer. For example, I typed Silver Oak. I couldn't find the desired wine (Auction Bordeaux Blend). Items 3-5 were from Twomey, with quite a few more Twomey labels in the top half. I got to the very bottom and saw the Lot 72 variant. I didn't see the one I wanted, so I added Auction to Silver Oak. Then I was able to find it, but neither this nor the Lot 72 were the first entries (a Twomey was second). It's far easier to find something when the list is alphabetical. Since I knew it was in the list, I went back to just "Silver Oak" as keywords. Then I was able to find it, about 10 from the bottom. I hadn't even noticed it the first pass. quote:
Let me know if anything seems weird. IMO it's a mixed blessing. When I pick a popular wine, it's often at the top. When it isn't, searching for it is unnatural and slow compared to alphabetic. quote:
There is also a toggle to let you expand the search to a traditional keyword search. I couldn't find this toggle. I checked Advanced Search and my Profile. I would prefer to use it as it was yesterday, but be able to toggle it to this style when necessary. On a related topic, I entered "2003 Cos" and it properly brought 2003 Ch. Cos d'Estournel to the top. I selected it, which brought up the exact match. It would be nice if the matching vintage was checked automatically in this situation. Ah, I found the toggle you described, "Show All Matching Wines" in the Add Wine flow. That's nice, not listing Les Pagodes and such. However, it might deserve its own button, as you can't toggle back, nor can you toggle (or even see) Show All Vintages without first toggling Show All Matching Wines. Now that I understand where you put the toggle, I would very much appreciate a toggle between the display order in the dropdown list. Today's implementation is confusing to visually search. If I can't toggle the display order, I'd pick populating the dropdown list alphabetically as it was yesterday. That was more intuitive and easier to use in all but the special cases. Just one man's opinion. It is really simple. If you want a broader search, use the arrows keys to select something from the autocomplete dropdown and then use the mouse to click into the search control. You can adjust as you wish or just hit enter to launch a keyword search. As for the rest of your issues, type more specific terms to narrow the list. In general, I cannot give you cake and ice cream at the same time. The list is a fixed size. You cannot pick 50 an then another 50. You cannot sort by frequency and then alphabetically. BTW, I very intentionally did NOT change the sort order when you are searching your own cellar. There it is alphabetic. Only for the global searches across 2 million wines is it sorted by frequency. Worst case. Type some words and HIT ENTER. You have a sorted list at that point where all wines match the keywords. You have powerful and simple tools to let you narrow this further in mere seconds. There are endless tools to help you narrow it down easily and quickly.
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Cheers! -Eric LeVine http://twitter.com/cellartracker http://facebook.com/cellartracker
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