Long Lists Smell

I am bothered by software that displays long lists of titles and expects one to read each one to find what they are looking for. Some people have a speed-reading gift. I don't. If the list is more than about 15 items, then there should be an way to search for substrings.

For example, back in the old days, a clever character based text interface to a file/directory listing went something like this:

 Welcome to the XYZ file system.
 Enter substring: foo
 Results:
 A - Foofoo and the fooman
 B - After the afro craze, the afoo
 C - The new silverware hybrid, the "foon"
 Type a letter: C   [Enter-key is not required. Esc. to start over]
 ...editor starts up...

If the search term is not specific enough to narrow it down to 15 or so results, then you are given the chance to offer more criteria such as a longer phrase or Boolean operators.

A GUI-based listing could have a drop-down-list at the top with options such as:

• Starts with
• Ends with
• Contains
• Contains word
• (etc...)

The same search term box stays in place such that if you get too many or too few terms, you can re-edit the existing string and try again. Unlike IncrementalSearch, this is easy to implement in most GUI engines.

At least with browser-based interfaces, one can do an "Edit, Find". But dedicated GUI's often don't have such an option.

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Every application needs IncrementalSearch.

I don't see how this is useful for multiple matches or if you don't know where in the result the sub-string is. It is just a "starts with" above and not equivalent to the other comparitors. Plus it may jump around the list making it hard to see the context.

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CategoryUserInterface