Search Box

I’m not a huge fan of the fact users need to click on the search icon to then search. Is there any way of converting this to an actual search box that appears in the menu bar and coverts to an icon if screen size is tablet or mobile?

Or at least show the search dropdown when the user hovers their mouse over it like Mashable does?

You can disable actual search box and install Ajaxy Live Search plugin.

Ing Geek – this is more about the icon on the main menu – http://monosnap.com/image/kbCRlxwhZ3APm7Pd2mFV2FjNNO5iKT – it requires a user to click on it to show the search box – http://monosnap.com/image/YTYzuDBDcIwJhp6yMeuz0LkhT1l9kS

What i’d like is either show a search box by default in the menu or change the behaviour to show the search box when someone mouses over the search icon.

Folks on mobile can’t hover, hence why it’s a ‘tap’ — this is a very common user interface being used widely on the net now that more than half web traffic is mobile.

You can, of course hack the theme to change the behavior, but you might need to hire somebody to do that if you don’t know how.

TagDiv has provided suggestions on how to do this in past forum posts, however, so they might be kind enough to do so again come Monday when they’re back in the saddle.

Anything can be modified in the theme if you wish to spend the time learning to do that; but obviously the theme is sold with a specific UX setup, hence the demo on themeforest.

You can try doing search in forum for this topic over the past 18 months; as it’s been covered many times before; sorry I don’t have the link.

Chris – true about the mobile bit.

From a UX perspective on desktop having to click disrupts the flow – having it appear on hover would be much better. For mobile it can be set for on-click. I use Mashable as an example as they do exactly that.

The answer may be go off and either code it myself or hire someone to do it but still think it is a valid UX concern on an amazing theme 🙂

Mashable and Newspaper needs one click 😛 Just its a diferent click

• This reply was modified 11 years by Ing Geek.

Time.com, latimes.com, etc. require click to search. Very very common now.

Chris – that may be true but from a UX perspective still a big no-no 🙂 Anyway just wanted to see if anything would/could be done easily without hiring contractors.

Although….
Now that i think about it, on one site we removed search from the menu bar and then just put widget search box top of sidebar. That was the simple fix for that.

Chris – sure and i’ve done something similar (i.e added a search box at top of sidebar).

Ing Geek – ha! Good point…

I suppose from a simple view I took a couple of family members (various ages but all adults) and asked them to search DeeperBlue.com (and they had seen previous design) – almost without a fault they found it difficult/confusing at first.

By saying lots of other sites do it doesn’t make it right from a UX perspective – take the burger icon (three lines on mobile) – it’s ubiquitous yet the majority of people (who don’t work in IT/Web) still struggle with understanding there is stuff under there…

As. 20 year webdev, 30 year designer, with numerous awards including one from Apple i can reaffirm it is not a ux mistake… Its only your particular preference on that. Fact is unless youre doing ecom, not many folks who surf in do searches, they find your site from search or social. But not to argue the point… Many sites with the largest traffic have adopted tap to search, its a ux standard methodology now, especially for mobile first design. But you can read up on this topic on various ux sites like smashing design, etc.

I was initally against it as well, as recently as late 2013, but i have now accepted it as viable … Its no worse the fly out mobile menu from left side, and in fact some folk are combining the flyout and putting search box in the flyout.

The really big sites are using search to trigger popup interstitial, then modal or search page with advert. Clever.

Anyway, just food for thought and disagree on the ux failing.