Bug: 4.0d Beta 2: problems with expand/collapse in search results

Rosie Perera

I've found several problems with the new expand/collapse functionality in search results:

First: Do a Basic search that will result in at least 2 pages worth of results when viewed By Book (e.g., I searched All Text in Entire Library for fulfilled)

Problem 1:

Make note of what the last book title on the first page of results is.

Right-click on any book title in the first page of results and select Expand Page.

Scroll down to the last expanded book visible on the first page. It's different from the first book on the page when they were collapsed. So what does "Expand Page" mean? Where is the "page" boundary?

Problem 2:

Click on several of the subsequent pages in sequence in the page navigation controls at the bottom of the page.

Notice that all subsequent pages are already expanded, even beyond the title that was the last title on the first page when they were all collapsed. So what does "Expand Page" really mean? It seems to have expanded everything. In fact, as you can tell if you collapse everything, then click on a page number other than 1, then expand just that page, it only expands from that page to the end, not the preceding pages.

Problem 3:

Now Collapse All and return to page 1 of the results

Expand Page

Collapse Page

The result is a page that is half collapsed and half expanded. This is strange. Collapse Page should get you back to where you started after doing Expand Page.

Problem 4:

Collapse All again and return to page 1 of the results

Expand Page

Go to page 2 of the results

Collapse Page

Go back to page 1 of the results

Right-click on a book title and notice that both Expand Page and Collapse Page are available on the menu. This seems odd because all the books on this page are already expanded. Normally the menu appropriately greys out commands that should be unavailable given the current expand/collapse state of the page.

 

Assessment: I think most of these problems are actually related (except for Problem 2) and stem from an inconsistent definition of what consitutes a "page" worth of search results, depending on whether the results are expanded or collapsed. This causes unexpected and unexplainable (to the user) behavior.

Mark Barnes

Scroll down to the last expanded book visible on the first page. It's different from the first book on the page when they were collapsed. So what does "Expand Page" mean? Where is the "page" boundary?

I don't view that as a problem. Pages are basically fixed height, so when you expand/collapse searches you would expect the pages to reflow. Otherwise you could potentially get tens of thousands of hits on one page, which would probably cause all sorts of out-of-memory errors.

The result is a page that is half collapsed and half expanded.

Again that is technically logical. Note I say 'technically'. "Expand page" covers (let's say) 30 resources, so they're expanded. But in its expanded state there are now only (e.g.) three resources on the page. So "Collapse Page" collapses those three, but leaves the 27 uncollapsed.

 

"Expand page" is most useful when (e.g.) you're on pg 4 of search results. "Expand all" will take you back to page 1, but "expand page" will keep you on page four, with the same result at the top, because pages 1-3 will not have been expanded.

However, I do agree with you that's its potentially confusing, and only useful in this one instance. I would therefore suggest that the option is removed. Instead, when we do an "Expand All",  I would suggest that the user sees the same results as he did before choosing "Expand All", even if that means moving him (e.g.) from page 4 of the results to a new page 11.