Based on your feedback we've come up with a new search UI that should better stick to HN's style: https://new-hn.algolia.com<p>Tell us what you think about it and what you'd like to see next (we're thinking for instance about adding search analytics on frequent queries in the last 24h/month/....)<p>Talking about next evolutions, we actually had something in mind and wanted to run it through HN's community. It's kind of crazy different so we hope we'll get tons of feedback on this one. This is an experimental skin with more search features and you can try on https://new-hn.algolia.com/?experimental<p>Here is a blog post explaining our reasoning about this experimental style: http://blog.algolia.com/try-new-experimental-version-hn-search/<p>We can't wait to get your comments and ideas!
1. A more powerful time filter would be very useful (Last week, last month, last year, custom range where dates can be picked).<p>Without this search is not very useful to me at the moment. So I use Google to search HN since they do offer a filter<p>2. Points filter and comments filter would also be great (> 10 points and/or > 5 comments). I get lot of results which have no activity
The one thing I do like about the new search site is that it doesn't open everything up in a new tab... something that is an annoyance with the current search. Please keep it that way! If I want something in a new tab, I'll just Ctrl+Click on the link.<p>Some other issues:<p>* Stories which have no external URL (text submission only) have titles which are not clickable.<p>* Comment results link to the submitted URL of the story. I was expecting the link would go to the comment itself, though this is likely a personal preference. When I view an individual comment, I either want to see all the other comments on the story or see the context by navigating to the parent if the comment is a reply. Seldom would I expect to view a comment several replies deep and then want to read the story.<p>* Clicking on the time reference (eg: "an hour ago") takes you to the anchor for the comment within all comments in the story, whereas clicking the "comments" link takes you to the specific individual comment. This is backwards.<p>* The up arrow shown in results seems to have no function. While it preserves the HN feel, it breaks expectations by having a different behavior. As it's unlikely upvoting from an external site is going to ever work, this should be changed to some other visual indicator.
Well, my large corporate employer uses Websense which seems to categorize hn.algolia.com as ("Category: hacking"), and blocks all queries (HN itself is fine). So I guess I'd say I need...search. Maybe you can get off the blacklist/on a whitelist?
I like the additional filtering in the experimental interface, for example to switch between "All" and "Hot". I could see that being quite useful. Though the experimental page has too much whitespace for my liking - I can see 5-6 stories on a page vs. 10 or so on the HN style page.<p>It would be great if it saved my preferences (Sort by, date range) since I usually end up flipping those values to the same thing.<p>One minor annoyance is "JavaScript" being picked up when I search for "java". Would be nice to have the option to search for whole words.<p>A very minor annoyance is usernames are treated the same as text in stories. If I search for 'IBM' for example, I'll get all stories submitted by user 'IBM'.
I haven't been able to produce a reliable test case, but I have noticed that fairly often, I try to search for a story or comment that I <i>know</i> exists, that I distinctly remember seeing in the past, and I won't be able to find it. Then randomly, perhaps after reposting said article, I'll try again later, with the exact same search terms, and it will show up in the results. Then a few days later, I look it up again, and it doesn't show up anymore.<p>I'm sorry that that isn't a terribly helpful bug report, but I think you have a frustrating bug in your backend somewhere.<p>A more concrete issue present in both the old UI and the new one would be that there is some kind of problem with your search form such that, on iOS Safari, the multiple forms control with the little arrows to select between fields pops up, even though there is only one field. This means you cannot see the search results while you are typing, when you would otherwise be able to see at least the title of the first result. Also, hitting "Go" (or now "return") doesn't make the input control go away, you have to hit the X next to the field select arrows to view the results, which manages to trip me up every time. I'm not a web guy though, so I don't know if that last one is inevitable for this kind of form or something.
People.<p>I'd love to see people-search-results beside the regular results. Who were the top submitters and commenters on links/comments related to my search? so HN identities like jlemoine.<p>Bonus points for people mentioned as subjects or authors in the stories/comments (and the articles the links point to) without an HN identity. Recognizing human names would be huge. Searching HN for Captain America, Linus, Steve Jobs, Paul Graham, or your own name should be popular.
Guys I love your search, but what I am missing is that you index the content behind the headlines. So I've build my own, for example:<p><a href="http://search.nagrgtr.com/#/search?q=greater%20than%2030kmh%20speed" rel="nofollow">http://search.nagrgtr.com/#/search?q=greater%20than%2030kmh%...</a>
I ran into a problem today where I'm trying to find something I saw a really long time ago - so sorting by date from oldest to newest would be great.<p>EDIT - If I can filter by date ranges like others have suggested, I would much prefer that to my sort direction request!
The ability to search only my saved articles. I'm guessing HN does no link click tracking, but searching viewed articles would be nice. These would be especially useful if the text on the target page were indexed as well.
Permalink the query and add comments. So "<a href="https://new-hn.algolia.com/?experimental&query=GOTHAM%20-manhattan%20-nyc%20-york&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=all"" rel="nofollow">https://new-hn.algolia.com/?experimental&query=GOTHAM%20-man...</a> can become a destination for conversation.
Perhaps this is too far outside of your existing scope of functionality but I'll throw it out there: I would really love a "Hacker News Alerts" feature. I make the same searches every week on a few key terms but it's a manual process.<p>If you could push new search results directly to my inbox it would be convenient.
Good job ;-) just for fun, I've build my own - based on Elasticsearch <a href="http://hnpaper.forge.partlab.io" rel="nofollow">http://hnpaper.forge.partlab.io</a>