android-classic
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Searching
The search facility in the web app is limited to notes within the currently selected tag. This is great, as search results can be reduced by selecting the appropriate tag before performing the required search. However, in the Android app, this is not the case. No matter what tag you have selected, the search returns matching results from your entire collection of notes. Shouldn't these two access methods function in the same manner ? It would be great to have the Android app limit its search results to those notes within the currently selected tag.
Maybe. I considered that approach but felt it would be unpredictable and a bit fiddly, if you do want to do a global search from a tag filter, then you have to de-select your tag before going to a different screen to do the search. Aren't search and tag filtering different cases? Search probably a more specialised situation, whereas tag filtering is about looking at different lists? If we can make it clear in the ui what's happening then I'm not against the change.
You see, now I would have said that attributes assigned to a note with a single value (eg. category, folder, notebook) were used for structural grouping, or looking at different lists. Tags, on the other hand, are essentially keywords used to classify content and allow for a more unstructured grouping. But this is just terminology.
The fact of the matter is that what makes a great notes app (program, whatever) is its ability to hone in on information when needed. The user needs to be able to locate a specific piece of information quickly and simply.
For me, tags and search go hand in hand. Selecting a tag provides an initial, rough filtering of the list based on a keyword. This gives the user the ability to reduce the number of notes quickly, by selecting a tag and without having to resort to entering in search text. If this is not enough to locate the required note, then this filtered list can be searched through. Without the initial rough filtering though, the search eventually becomes useless, once you have a large number of notes.
To provide the ultimate searchability, an app should really provide two things.
1 . Allow for multiple tag selection This allows the user to initially filter lists to some accuracy, before having to resort to a search - by asking for the list to be filtered to those notes that contain tag x and tag y and tag z.
- Allow for keyword searching rather than text searching For example, a straight text search for the entered value [large book] searches for the presence of the text “large book” and not the keywords “large” and “book”. This would therefore return “…which is a very LARGE BOOK in its…” but not “…a BOOK which is very LARGE…”.
But, once again, providing a keyword search is useless without being able to initially filter the list. As, in the above example, without initially filtering the same search [large book] would also return “…found a LARGE hole in the tyre, so the car was BOOKed in for…”.
I agree with you though, in that the UI should make it clear what the search is searching through. In the main list of the app, the Title “Notes” is displayed in the App Bar with either “All Notes” underneath it, or the currently selected tag. This is great, and very clear to the user. If you could somehow provide a second line under the App Bar (when the search is expanded for the user to enter their text) to display the current filtering, then this should be more than enough.
Anyway, I do hope you do decide to implement searching within the currently selected tag, as I do believe that it will enhance the user’s ability to locate notes.
Those other things need to be submitted as different issues if you want them doing. I agree that searching within the tag is a reasonable change to make.