User talk:JDrewniak (WMF)/notes/Search widgets at Wikimedia

There's a type ahead widget on Special:Search which certainly looks different than any of the others. I do not know if the implementation is the same as searchSuggest, but I wanted to point this out.

That's an OOUI TitleOptionWidget with the Wikidata description and PageImage image options switched off. I'll add it to the listing of use cases.

 Done:

As a user, I often want to search for something without leaving my current page. To do this, I type in the search bar, and middle-click or ctrl-click on the result(s) in the autocomplete-dropdown, which opens the link(s) in a new tab.

There is an additional gadget installed on some wikis (e.g. commons, enwiki) that enables a user to ctrl-click (not middle-click) on the magnifying-glass-icon, or to use ctrl-enter, in order to open the Advanced Search results page in a new tab. This acts the same as ctrl-clicking the bottom-item "Containing..." via the searchsuggest widget (e.g. enwiki default).

Whichever widget/code we use, Ctrl-click or middle-click should continue to work properly (i.e. open the link in a new tab) for individual search results, AND ideally be made to work for Ctrl/middle-clicking on the magnifying-glass-icon, or using ctrl-enter.

Of the existing widgets:

• searchSuggest:
  • clicking: Works for results, Broken for icon.
  • e.g. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite?useskin=vector
• TitleOptionWidget:
  • clicking: Works for results, No icon
  • e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&veaction=edit
• SearchOverlay:
  • clicking: Works for middle-clicking results, Broken for Ctrl-clicking results, Broken for icon.
  • e.g. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite?useskin=minerva
• WMTypeAhead:
  • clicking: Broken for both
  • e.g. https://www.wikipedia.org/

There is one more search widget that isn’t mentioned on this page: the one used on Wikidata. While it may not be useful as a base for the one widget to rule them all, I think it’s worth mentioning as it has a UX effect by being different from all these four: it shows descriptions, but doesn’t show images, and it also tries to be similar to searchSuggest in its layout (colors, spacing etc.), which is the only one that doesn’t show anything but the title…