I am designing a user management system for an intranet. It takes after most traditional interfaces for managing and editing user details.
The system is designed with fall back so that users without javascript will get the standard page reload, while users with javascript will get smooth ajax loading.
The interface looks like so:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
Normally, if a user without javascript searches, then he gets redirected to http://site.com/users/search/some-search-term/1
Clicking next page would take him to
http://site.com/users/search/some-search-term/2
and so on.
The problem I have now is that I would like to implement type ahead for javascript enabled users. As the user types into the search box, the table of users in the system should start filtering.
If the results require pagination after searching, then pagination should still work. The link would be http://site.com/users/search/some-search-term/2
and a history entry would be created because I think most users would expect an entry in their browser's history when clicking a link.
My question is: When do I create a history entry to the search history? For example, someone might start typing jo
, then john
. At what point do I create a history entry for this search?
Are there any other ways to do this so that I could perhaps even avoid this issue?