My Google analytics shows the second most used keyword to access my site is the url of the site. This doesn't particularly surprise me, but I wondered if any of you have tried educating your users out of this (i.e. detecting search term from referrer and showing a popin encouraging them to create bookmarks etc.) or is it just a waste of effort or likely to annoy.
UPDATE
I was watching someone the other day and discovered one possible reason why people do this. If you try clicking in the address bar and click twice instead of once, then type your url, you get a big mess. Far easier to type into the nice empty google search box (which is also selected by default). So basically you have the choice between:
Type > Enter > Click
or
BadClick > Type > Enter > "Bugger!" > Click > Type > Enter
Similarly, Microsoft noted long ago that many people just type search queries into the address bar. If there are essentially between two and four unlabeled text boxes on a browser window (address bar, search box, maybe Google start page, toolbars, etc.) don't expect the user to find the right one when they should.
As long as they end up where they wanted to they couldn't care less.
Google Chrome did the right thing imho by merging at least the search and the address bar again.
for most people, google is the internet.
Focus your efforts somewhere else, like providing good contents. It does not matter how they get there.
Good luck :) Most of internet users may even not realize if the address bar gets removed from their browser. Typing a URL is far too technical.
I'm not sure anything can be done. Users are known to be extremely stubborn in their habits.
One my fellow googles for the login page of his online-banking system, being too lazy to type it in or bookmark it. That scares me a lot. It only takes for someone to manipulate search results even for a day or so to hijack the credentials.
I suggest you ignore the matter. With luck, if they google enough for your site, then google will start to show the name of your site in suggestions as your type which is rather nice.
I've tried to encourage the use of a browser at work to access the data I put on the company intranet. It's proving difficult — they would much rather open My Computer and drill down through many levels of folders, while muttering 'Where was that file? What was it called again?'
I prefer the idea of web pages on an intranet site, with images, hyperlinks, etc, but I have to be careful not to use the term 'browser' since people don't really know what it means. For example, I demonstrated the site to one colleague by telling her to start 'Internet Explorer', then I typed the URL, rather than explain it to her. When the web page opened, she said 'Oh wow, what program is this?'
I've gone to some trouble to use 'friendly URLs' — no complex query strings, but it was probably a waste of time. I'm sure no-one types them in and uses bookmarks/favorites instead.
If the address bar disappeared, it wouldn't be missed by the majority of Internet users, and there's a Google/Yahoo/whatever search tool in the corner of each page.
Related
So I am using the omnibox in my extension, and after a user enters something in the omnibox, it becomes part of the extensions "history" (which would be a nice feature). However, when the history entry is clicked on, it goes to "chrome-extension//?q=, and that returns an Error 6 (net::ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND). Is there any way to remedy this situation, either by allowing this to act as it did the first time, or just by disabling the history?
EDIT: so it turns out one cannot inject content scripts into chrome-extensions (even though the documentation says you can (they're fixing this hopefully)
Any other advice is still appreciated, but I've become less hopeful that this can be done.
Once upon a time, i came across a weird entry in google search result.
The entry would sit there strangely, with artefacts of text standing tall & vertical.
At once I fired up my trusty firebug to analyse the problem. It appeared immediate that the origin was purely in the text content, nothing could explain why it stood so tall.
I thought it puzzling that the text would suddenly change direction. I found it even more interesting that the browser would not reflow its content to adjust for it. The text just sat there, ignoring the laws of internet. Was the world falling appart? It is 2012 after all.
If seeing it in a pictogram is what you wish then to gaze at the following screenshot:
(This be Chrome (16.0.912.75 mac). This thus happens on Firefox 9 too)
If seeing it in action is what you wish then to click on the following search result link: Search link
What form of sorcery is causing that?
Stackoverflow worthy questions:
Why is the text direction changing without any html markup to trigger it?
Why is the text not forcing the browser to reflow the content and accomodate for it?
I don't think it's related to google, its jankenpopp.com-related, looks like one of those languages where you need to read from top to botton instead of left to right.
I was a bit sketchy to click that link...
After much online research and getting close to what I am looking for by hacking it together (ie. modifying templates and other files, exactly what every expert out there appears to advise against in terms of SharePoint customization) I have decided to go ahead and post my issue here to see if anybody has ever had any experience with this.
In essence, I start off with a plain My Sites host. I would like to keep the My Profile and My Content pages, and add a bunch of new content of top on that. For us, simplicity is of utmost importance and so when I created a new Web Part Page and noticed that it added an additional ribbon under the navigation menu, I decided that it had to go. This is what it looks like out of the box:
With ribbon
Notice that at this point I have already made a few modifications, such as removing the My Site link that by default appears all the way to the left of the other options. This sadly was accomplished in a very brute-force way.
Now, here is the ribbon-free navigation bar, which is just what I want to be able to design without making system changes that I will regret in the future (and that may be easily overwritten by a CU or hotfix)
Without ribbon
So I guess I should make this clear, I don't want the navigation gone, just customized (ie. no My Site string to the left of my options, no Site Actions drop-down for read-only users) and the Browse/Page ribbon that gets added by default everytime you create a new page, well that one just needs to be gone completely, as shown in the second screenshot.
I have read all about hiding ribbons (which just hides the whole thing, including navigation), customizing ribbons (no success in accomplishing this type of basic navigation after trying them out) and simply don't know what to do anymore.
Maybe I am just taking the wrong approach by modifying something instead of just creating it from scratch, at the end of the day it is nothing but a static navigation bar common to all the pages with the special current user drop-down all the way to the right, then if a user has write permissions, she would also get the Site Actions drop-down under Home, that's it.
Hopefully an answer to this question will help others as well who are looking to simplify their SharePoint My Sites host a bit, as out of the box the number of web components that users are presented with might be just a little too overwhelming for your everyday employee, at least in the industry that we operate in.
Anyway, thank you kindly in advance, I look forward to your replies. Do let me know if there is something that is not entirely clear from my explanation :)
If you take away user's Create Personal Site permission (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262500.aspx) in your User Profile, the "My Site" link will go away.
I'm using a standard link list web part. What I want to achieve is before my users click on the link a pop-up javascript warning box will display, stating that they are leaving the domain. In regular anchor tag I would preceed the URL with javascript:ShowWarning('http://www.youtube.com');.
I've search the AllLinks table in the database but did not find the links was looking for.
Where or how are these stored?
Thanks,
Risho
Firstly, editing the SharePoint database directly is a really bad idea. You shouldn't do it unless you really, really know what you are doing, and even then you will probably break the system.
Secondly, any change made in the data will be what shows up in the editor, and I don't think the editor supports links that don't start with "http://".
A better approach is to use jquery to add the popup behaviour to the links when the page is loaded.
I was wondering if it was ever ok not to have a submit button (Ok, Go or Search for example) near a search box in Web pages.
I know that hitting enter is much faster and that it will perform the search.
However, is it an accepted convention for the average non tech savvy user or only for the tech community?
For example, the search box here at stackoverflow doesn't have a submit button, but I don't think anyone is complaining (and I sure don't).
On the other hand, someone suggested using Google as an example: would people notice if the buttons were removed?
I just started reading Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug and he mentions that every search box should have something that tells me I can click on it to launch the search.
Your thoughts?
Why you should have a button:
Not everyone knows they can hit
enter, so you are leaving some less
savvy people out in the cold.
Some devices like phones and consoles may not have a way to submit without a button. The PC based browser is still dominant but don't assume it is the only way people access your site.
You may not have a button if (both conditions must be satisfied):
Your audience is tech savvy (as on SO)
You provide a visual cue that the search box actually is a search box
By adding text inside it mentioning it should be used to search
By adding an icon inside the box
Generally I would think that hitting enter is a shortcut to submit rather than the primary means.
I think it depends on your target market. If you are StackOverflow it's not too hard too think they know how to use a browser (using a back button on a browser to navigate is a similair design convention) and pressing Enter = submit for search.
However if your target market is say mechanics (no offence to mechanics) that don't use a browser/computer often then look at how Google does it (and they target the broadest scope) - they have a button to submit.
There is a middle ground you could look at, which is have a water mark like StackOverflow which tells users "Click here, type in search values and press enter to search" - or something like that (hopefully shorter) where you actually catering for users of all levels.
Whether or not a button is required depends on the audience. Here are issues to consider:
Technically oriented users may not need a button and will usually not have to think about hitting enter to submit a search request.
Conversely non-technical people may not even know it is possible to hit enter to submit a search request. So no amount of thinking might work for them.
There may be technology limitations that require a button. If you expect your audience to be browsing your form from a platform that does not provide an implicit way to submit a search request then you may need to provide an explicit button.
So essentially you need to know your audiences and determine where the edge cases lie and how critical they are. Using SO as an example, it is directed at technical users so an explicit button probably isn't required. However for a site like google where you need to be accessible to every single user using every possible platform, a clear explicit search button is a must.
"Don't Make Me Think" - so gimme a button.
There will always be someone using the application for the first time; don't make them think either. And your screen shouldn't be so fussy that it is impossible to fit the button in comfortably - that would indicate a different set of problems.
I think for a non-tech person some sort of submit button is needed. Think about people who don't use computers very much. They often click all of the buttons needed instead of hitting enter because they don't realize enter does the same thing. My opinion...if it isn't for tech guys only then it should be as simple as possible.
It depends on your audience. Steve's audience is everybody. Majority of which are so far from IT you'd need a telescope to see them. If your auditory is a single user, you might skip all clues: button (with or w/o names), in-box label.
For my own login window I leave two fields: no labels, no buttons, no javascript to tell you which one is which. But that's not a public project.
A while ago there was an article on Smashing Magazine about this.
There were some alternatives like a looking glass or another icon, but basically there is always a button, or something which represents it.
Having a button makes it clearer that the text field is a search field. Merely having the text field itself indicate this in its contents is unsufficient.