Re: Searching before browsing (a recommendation)

Posted by Mike Wilson on Dec 29, 2008; 12:25pm
URL: https://support.nabble.com/missing-nabble1-functions-in-nabble2-tp2042515p2084779.html

Graham Perrin wrote

Mike Wilson wrote

2) Browsing categories
While maybe not perfect, the nabble1 activity-sorted category browsing usually makes me find a good category quickly, and is also a good way of finding sub-categories or other lists. In nabble2 I just failed in finding anything useful before giving up, maybe because nabble2 is giving less sense of structure?

I tend to find that beginning with a search (not beginning with a browse) *always* finds what I seek, with amazingly few clicks.

I think this works better in some cases than in others. F ex I was looking for a "Software" category to mirror that category from Nabble1. In Nabble1 it is right at the top of the Active List which tells me this is a commonly used category. On Nabble2, with your tip about looking at forum matches in a search, I do find Software in a list with 300+ forums. Or actually ~30 different instances of a Software category - it is quite evident that other people than me have a problem finding existing categories and create new ones from scratch instead.

As long as the system doesn't put the structural info right up in your face, most users will miss it as they are just muddling through (see the web usability book "Don't make me think!"). Nabble1 did a much better job in this respect. Maybe the plan with Nabble2 is to skip the forum categorization and have everything at the top level, and then we'll have to respect that. Though, I quite enjoyed the possibility to discover new forums just by browsing categories on Nabble1 without having to search for a particular subject.