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Yes, that is a very good idea. There are a number of sites that I have used that don't do this, and the result can be very frustrating. Lets say that I have spent time looking at many items and I am many items below the search / filter component. If I want to double check what it is, I have to lose my place and spend time scrolling up first. Poor ...

I recently spoke with Sarah Alpern about her work on refining LinkedIn's search. They too have a great deal of data to sift through. She has written two great posts on this subject that I think you will find useful. http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/12/02/optimizing-your-linkedin-search-experience/ ...

Informing users what's going on is never wrong. Assuming that we’re within time limit (<100 ms) and do not need to do anything is always wrong. How can you tell how long it takes for user X to download content Y from your site Z at any given moment? There must be at least 200 unknown variables here that you do not have control over. That’s the reason we ...

In Best Practices for Designing Faceted Search Filters Greg Nudelman talks about "drill-down" versus "parallel" selection: A link is the simplest mode of filter selection. By clicking a link, a customer can either select a single value for a specific filter or drill down a level in a taxonomy, like a category or department hierarchy. [...] In ...

Yes, it's possible to integrate filters with breadcrumbs to create a more robust product browsing experience. Such a system is called faceted navigation (your filters are facets). There's one catch to it: you must give your users the option to edit/remove any of them without changing the rest. Faceted navigation mimicking breadcrumbs is easy to implement in ...

One idea is to group the child category filters below the parent category. This makes it clear that the child category filters will return a subset of the parent: download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups This design gives you flexibility in the event that your taxonomy changes. For example if a new subject type is ...

One technique that I don't see implemented as often as I'd like is default search preferences by user. For example, when searching Yelp, I always want my default to be "open now", "biking distance", "highest rated"... but the site has no option to remember that, so I waste a lot of time selecting the same options over and over. A version of that which ...

I think your concern that updating the result in real time would distract the users is not actually a serious issue - in general, most interfaces strive to be as quick and responsive as possible (see Amazon shopping interfaces, eBay filtering interfaces, or Google instant search). The real issue is whether or not you can actually be responsive while ...

I implemented something similar to the design described by @mookamafoob. My filters are divided into three categories, which are related hierarchically. Each filter setting indicates how many values will be available if it is selected; the values adjust dynamically as filters are selected. The screenshots below illustrate this design: As you can see, ...

One more option to consider, if you can expand the dropdown a little bit treating it as a pane rather than dropdown sensu stricto: Remember that criteria in the top right only can present a short sumary of what is defined in filters, but this should be enough for user to be aware of it. The idea is to show the filters alongside with the dropdown.

Consider this layout: The search field is clearly visible, distinct, and the filtered results appear below, to be chosen by the user. For multi select, you can use the tag approach: Both examples are part of an open source Javascript plugin, Chosen.

I suggest the following rules for the check-box filters: No need for "Show All" option. Instead, add a "clear selections" link under the facet's label whenever 1 or more options are selected. Sort the options in each facet by their number of results. Don't show options that have 0 results. Show up to 3-5 options for each facet, and a "show more options" ...

NewEgg has a good solution for at least part of this problem. They created some range sliders that are used for multiple purposes... You could certainly use that for the ratings filter. The other thought is to hide the options for which there are 0 matches, such as the top 3 options of "resource type".

I guess the top positioning feels more like it's controlling the results from first use, where as left positioning feels more like filtering as an afterthought if you don't see what you want to start off with. According to the Faceted Metadata for Information Architecture and Search ( http://flamenco.berkeley.edu/talks/chi_course06.pdf page 54) the lesson ...

For faceted search, the best practice I can recommend is to not allow the user to create a condition that will end in no results. When the user makes a selection, disable elements that do not have results tied to them. Any further user selection should further narrow the current already filtered result set. download bmml source – Wireframes ...

Pre-offer results as much as possible If you can correct spelling: pre-offer the results of the correction along with the correction If the user has too many filters: pre-offer unfiltered results and offer to turn filters off If the system can find results for fewer terms, offer the those fewer terms If the system can find results for words that are ...

The filter method you suggest usually works pretty well. We're using a variant of it in one of our products: This way we still have a heading row at the top which you can use for ordering data. This also ensures that you know which column contains what even if a value has been filled in the filter. Disclaimer: this is a web-app for which the users are ...

I think the filtering links at the top of the table work well. At first I couldn't make sense of your Right hand filtering table - but I realise its similar to the Amazon filtering system. So perhaps better to put the filtering table on the left hand side? I've also seen it done above the table with WordPress, which seems more noticeable than your right ...

You have two good options which doesn't exclude each other - so I'd say why choose when you can have both? I think both are equaly valid since some users don't trust "Share on FB" and rather want to share th URL instead. So if you have both the "share"-option and the copy-URL option more users will find your implementation supporting their way of using the ...

This feels like an awkward and unnecessary solution. Firstly, it's possible that your domain is such that users don't need to differentiate between criteria matches, just see the matches themselves. Most listings sites that use faceted search provide search criteria that aren't reflected in the text of the listing summaries themselves, and that doesn't ...

I do not believe it is a misuse of form elements, because in the W3C reference you provided the following stood out to me: The intended use of a submit button is to generate an HTTP request that submits data entered in a form However in the Test section (emphasis added): If [having a submit button] is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, ...

One alternative is to have the facet filters horizontally across the top and contract / expand them. Have them stick to the top of the page, or under other fixed items and you have a killer combination. Also one thing worth thinking about with infinite scrolls is if you know how many items you have you can also give some indication of where the user is in ...

If by faceted search you mean allowing multiple filters, it is a good idea to do that in your scenario. In your demo you have filtering based on genre and the sub-filtering based on ratings. I would suggest converting it into checkboxes and separating the filters: download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups

I feel that rather than thinking about this as a "search"-filter, just think of it as a filter or as a menu laid out bare. Something along the lines of such web designs: http://themeforest.net/item/yin-yang-light-and-slick-wp-portfolio-theme/full_screen_preview/634395?ref=lvraa Rather than going for a traditional top-down or narrow-to-wider (wherein you ...

Here is an example of a dropdown with filtering and advanced filtering options: The filter icon on the right will toggle advanced filtering (by file type in this case). You may change the colour of the filter icon (button) to differentiate the state of advanced filtering (gray for off and blue for on).

Thanks for the thoughtful examination of search state and sharing. I have a point of correction to contribute. You mentioned that query strings can't reflect search criteria with async in the picture: When using a full page post back for each selection you can add query string variables representing the search criteria, but this is not the case with ...

A project I am working on currently is facing a similar issue, though here the searches could result in thousands of entities. We are working on allowing pre-filtering in order to reduce the number of results to a manageable number. The design we are toying around with currently is a section of the search area that says explicitly the number of current ...

How about a filter text field, where you can type in filters which are auto-completed to known legal values? These could be added similar to tags in small button like boxes below that text field as they are added with a button/icon to remove them. This would allow you to add many filters, and it wouldn't matter whether they filtered by country, city or ...

Change the way you think. What I mean by that is you know what you have, you don't know what you need. The filtering could be placed in a hidden panel or drawer that is above the the content. Use a trigger to easily get to it. It would then push down the data table. This way it's not in the users face taking up valuable space but is there when needed. Allow ...

Nice work on the modal, I just wanted to offer some general feedback since I don't see a specific question. The lines often blur between searching vs filtering depending upon how applications work and are arranged visually. Does your form apply any selected filters ahead of the search query, or does it afterward to the results? I ask because your filters ...