Re: [Usability] Gnome HIG suggestion: search box clear buttons

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Jun 2, 2007, at 12:52 PM, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Caleb Marcus wrote:
> ...
> > I'd like to suggest that the GNOME HIG recommend including clear
> > buttons next to search boxes that change the current view. I've
> > attached a screenshot of an example of one of these, from Mozilla
> > Thunderbird. When the user starts typing in the find-as-you-type box,
> > the red "X" button appears in the right side of the search box. When
> > clicked, it clears the text in the search box and resets the view back
> > to normal.
> ...
> I'm not sure I see a compelling reason to provide an alternative to
> backspace/delete for ordinary users.
> ...

Because for many if not most search fields, people frequently want to 
clear the contents -- either to enter a new search, or to return a list 
to its unfiltered state. That is true much less often for text fields 
that aren't search fields (the most prominent exception being a Web 
browser's address field).

The issue of special-casing search fields has also recently come up in 
the design of HTML 5. <http://urlx.org/lists.whatwg.org/3711a>

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/