Ted Patrick - Demos & MAX @ Adobe Systems
Note: This is the personal blog of Ted Patrick. The opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
Flex Search Alpha 1
DIGG IT!
12
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Published
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
at
11:00 AM
.
Flex Search is an optimized search for Flex across all content both within Adobe, discussion lists, and the development community. The focus of development has been the search logic and content aggregation. The user interface (flex development) was limited to 30 minutes here. The current engine contains the collective history of Flexcoders, FlexComponents, Flex Developer Center articles, Flex documentation, AS3 documentation, and soon blogs from the flex community. Flex Search Alpha 1 - http://www.flex.org/api/FlexSearch/Alpha1/
The Flex Search Alpha contains a base remoting API. The details of the API can be located within the source code of this application located here: http://www.flex.org/api/FlexSearch/Alpha1/srcview/index.html. This Search API and RemoteObject component in the source are configured to allow any domain search access. You can host Flex Search on your site and modify the UI as needed.
Features:
1. Search Flexcoders, FlexComponents, Flex Dev Center, Flex Documentation, AS3 Documentation and soon blog posts on flex.
2. Boolean Search syntax:
Cairngorm --> Search for Cairngorm
+Cairngorm -flexcoders --> Require 'Cairngorm', remove 'flexcoders'
flash.net.* --> Wildcards supported
3. AMF Remoting API with server caching logic. Only unique requests hit the database as a search. 2nd request is cached. Also when the index is rebuilt, the URL's can be replayed caching prior content.
4. Search reporting and metrics for tuning. All searches are stored.
In development:
1. User rating and Exit ratings in results.
2. Search limited to source or category > Just search FlexCoders or just discussion lists.
3. Blog aggregation - Simply add a link to this image to your page to get indexed!
4. Previews and Abstracts
5. Restful urls (bookmark and back button support).
The think that is key to understand is that only 30 minutes was spent on the user interface in flex. The interface is not a good example of Flex use and as I invest more in the UI, the evolution will become clear. This was also my first real ColdFusion application. The spider, parser, search engine are all running on ColdFusion with a MYSQL database.
I want the development of this project to be wide open in plain view. Ideally everyone can see the evolution of this application from the very beginning to the finished site. The evolution will explore how best implement search leveraging HTML/Flex/Coldfusion. Also if I were to release this as a more finished project, I think we would also miss out on an opportunity to tune this towards the community. Your feedback is important and will guide the development choices moving forward. It should be a great journey but this release is the first step of many.
Please post your feedback in the post comments.
Release early, Release often!
Cheers,
Ted :)
12 Responses to “Flex Search Alpha 1”
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Ted,
This is great, fast and very useful indeed.
Thanks...
Some suggestions:-
1) Border around textfield
2) Way to see the page corresponding t o search-result in same window. Probably, a bottom frame in the application using Christophe's IFrame (already ported to Flex2 by Brian).
3) Or a way to open result in new window or tab. Probably a text-link instead of Go button.. You can probably make the result label a link, context-menu would have three links provided by Flash Player.
4) Deep-linking or bookmarking a particular link provided if result can be previewed in same window otherwise this is not required.
5)Not required, but send to email (sometimes I search for my colleagues and send them the links..)
Would let you more...
-abdul
I'd actually prefer this to be HTML rather than a Flex UI.
Welcome to ColdFusion and Remote Objects. :-) This is another great example of combining the rapid Flex 2 UI and power of CFMX 7.0.2. Looking forward to this picking up Flex-related blogs.
Best regards,
Mike Givens
Claus,
1. Can you be more specific?
- Right-Click New window ?
- Highlight visited Links ?
- Restful URLS ?
- Bookmarkability?
One of the problems with Flex is that because no one has done search in Flex well doesn't mean it can't be a better expierience. I have seen many cases where HTML is better and many cases were Flex is better. The problem is that few people are testing the unknown waters in flex. Maybe its not the right tool here, but with the right investment in UI I think it is. 30 mins is the total invested time thus far.
There are some advantages that I think we should surface here in Flex:
1. Client filtering and sorting
2. Async Logic - Save to Favorites, Ratings Inline, Email Inline, Image Previews, Text Abstracts.
3. Restful URL that drive search - FXT or modified version.
4. Deeper search content.
The mistake is to blindly limit our options without exploring. The world is flat right?
Exploration is good and if this app was going to be limited to just text results, html might be the right choice.
Ted :)
Yeah, uncharted waters scare land lovers.
Just take a look over at my latest blog post (11-15).
I have a fully functional documenter created in Flex, uses FLex AS3 to parse and load, and explores in Flex using XML and the FLex ui to look exactly like that ASDOcs.
I only did the look to show people what Flex can do.
This is the tip of the ice berg with my documenter. I was going to can it 4 months ago, now I am glad I didn't. ;-)
As far as being a pioneer, I'm with ya Ted, my last J O B was Land Surveying... hahaha!!!!!
Peace, Mike
Following are more features/functionality that would be nice.
Total matches? (Please display this on each search execution.)
Dates? Is there any way to capture and display dates on the dated items? E.g. from lists (Flexcoders, FlexComponents, etc) and DevNet? etc. If dates, then sortable by date?
Aggregated threads? Like gmail does? (Rather than each post on a single thread being displayed individually)
List sorting? Is there any logic currently being applied regarding what displays first? Like google search does?
Phrase vs all. Support quoting for phrases. Versus the case where several unquoted words that are separated by spaces are all assumed to be required terms (i.e. implied "and").
Right-Click Open in New window support. (I understand, Flash Player 9 does not support this. Still thought I would ask ;-)
Thanks,
g
Ted, simply: GREAT!!!
Ted,
I went ahead and did a Flex Search Mashup. The code is available through the right clicking:
http://renaun.com/flex2/posts/FlexSearchMain.html
Renaun
Ted,
for me, Google does this job very well. Sorry for being a PITA ;)
In addition to what Abdul, g and you already listed:
- display a short text summary for the individual search results
- a feature i *always* use with search engines is 'open link in new tab', preferably by clicking the mouse wheel (Firefox). Probably not doable in Flex.
- get rid of those 'go' buttons
- make the search input field look like an input field (it kinda looks more like a headline)
And:
"The problem is that few people are testing the unknown waters in flex"
You're not refering to me here, are you? ;)
claus,
you are an explorer! Good points.
ted :)
The API!!! Brilliant!!!
Seeing Renaun's mashup ... now I get it!!!
At this URL (that Renaun posted), click on the little green "candy corn" icons along the left:
http://renaun.com/flex2/posts/FlexSearchMain.html
Virtually everything I posted yesterday as "would be nice" are just UI features.
Flex Search is: a) an engine; b) an API; c) a Flex client UI.
Don't like the UI? Got ideas to make it better? Follow Renaun's lead and code up your own! (As Ted and Adobe no doubt hope you will :-)
Regarding Claus's initial post that he'd "prefer this to be HTML". Easy enough. Using your favorite web application server, and with Remoting call the API and customize the UI however you see fit. Brilliant.
Minor note back to Ted ... I have not yet had a chance to confirm if dates can be accessed separately in the data. If not, when bringing the data into the engine, if you can parse out and store dates separately, it will help make implementing date sorts and searches far easier.
I am very interested to see how things evolve from here.
g
Something is broken when navigating to detailed page of found item while using Flex Search (alpha 1) at your web-site...
For example,
1) enter search query:
"+XML +dataprovider"
2) Click on first item found:
"[flexcomponents] Tree :: Getting references from the dataProvider an"
3) http://www.flex.org/go/490 link takes nowhere :(