Search or Browse?
A little while ago, Brent Simmons asked his readers about their window management style: whether they manage clutter by closing, minimizing, or hiding. Lately, I’ve been interested in a similar “Beatles People vs. Elvis People” distinction: some people tend to prefer to locate things by browsing, while others prefer search.
I, for example, fall squarely into the search camp. I almost never use the “Browse” view in iTunes–if I want to listen to a specific album, I find it more expedient to simply type the name of the album into the search field. This is a bit messier, of course, since it usually turns up songs that are not part of the album, but that doesn’t really bother me. I do the same thing with Mail: rather than sorting my messages into a number of folders, I prefer to let it all go into one big inbox and find what I need later by searching. I suppose you could say I prefer ad-hoc, logical views of my data to concrete hierarchical organization (which could also be one reason I love the concept of tagging so much).
Obviously Tiger, with its focus on search and metadata at both the system level and app level, is a huge boon to people like me, and I think my experience demoing it at MacWorld this year really threw the search/browse dichotomy into sharp relief. I demonstrated Spotlight features like Smart Folders to nearly everyone I talked to, but while everyone seemed to understand them, only about half seemed to think of them as killer features the way I do.
So how about you–are you a searcher or a browser?
April 19th, 2005 at 11:56 am
I’m a huge browse user. I don’t think Spotlight will be that useful to me for normal files, since I’ve used the Finder’s search/find roughly 5 times since I’ve owned a Mac (10+years).
April 19th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
I try to keep things organized enough to be a browser, but if the clutter/disorganization gets to overwhelming I’m happy being a searcher.
As far as iTunes goes, you can change the function of those little arrow buttons that appear next to each artist, song, and album. Normally they take you to the corresponding album, song, or artist at the iTunes Music Store, but typing “defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES” in Terminal makes them search your library instead. So, if you search for, I don’t know, Abbey Road, but it brings up a bunch of songs called Abbey Road as well as the Beatles album, just click on the little arrow button next to the Beatles’ Abbey Road and it’ll filter out the songs not on the album.
April 19th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Searcher, wherever I go. This starts with the gratuitous use of “hide all” and using Quicksilver to unhide, what I have hidden, over Mail and lately a lot of Spotlight.
April 19th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
I’m an iTunes searcher too, but instead of modifying the store links behavior (which I have turned off), I’ll just change the pop-up in the search field to be either “Albums” or “Songs”, depending on what I’m looking for. : )
April 19th, 2005 at 3:55 pm
I wonder if the dichotomy you noticed between searchers and browsers is correlated with notebook users and desktop users… I don’t like clicking through lots of folders using my trackpad, but maybe if I was using a big ol’ mouse, it wouldn’t be a problem.
At any rate, I’m definitely a searcher. I try to keep some hierarchies around, but I’d rather have the computer work to support me than the other way around. Let it find that stuff.
April 19th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
I’m a searcher by nature but the iTunes browse mode may not be the best example as it has something of a search nature as well - I use it frequently for what could be thought of as a multi-value search (e.g. WHERE Genre IN (’Rock’, ‘Electronica’) AND Artist IN (…)).
For me the best test is whether someone “gets” Launchbar or Quicksilver - a friend and I were discussing how badly the Finder sucks today and he had a long list of minor UI glitches which I’d never noticed because I’ve been a Launchbar user for so long that I hardly use the Finder any more.
April 19th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
Mostly a searcher but that came with Launchbar and iTunes. Prior to that I was a browser.
What I needed were good mechanisms for searches. I take the path of least resistance to what I want. Both iTunes and Launchbar (as well as Quicksilver and I presume Spotlight) provide faster access to the things I want than browsing.
I suppose if I knew the exact path to what I was looking for then I could browser there faster but my home folder is 10 Gigs not including my music. Trying to remember where anything is a waste to time and thought when usable search mechanisms can get me there faster and turn up things that I didn’t even remember were there.
April 19th, 2005 at 11:06 pm
I guess I must be kind of lame because at least as far as iTunes is concerned I’m neither a Browser nor a Searcher; I’m a Scroller. I never use the browse view and I often forget that the search field exists, so I just sort by album and then scroll through my library to find the one I’m looking for. Not the most efficient way to do it, I suppose, but it works.
April 20th, 2005 at 7:16 am
Definitely searcher. It’s only come out for real after the release of Mac OS X, however, and especially iTunes where I filter my day away. I for one can’t wait for Spotlight. The most annoying thing is that my current mail program doesn’t have very good search facilities (my mailbox has some attempts at sorting using folder and sub-folders, but the bulk of my email is simply in the mailbox itself).
April 20th, 2005 at 7:55 am
I used to be a browser. I had folders and filters and didn’t understand how someone couldn’t front-load enough to maintain an organizational system of some sort.
Today, I can barely keep up with the amount of incoming information I need to manage. I have to search - there just isn’t a choice.
April 22nd, 2005 at 6:44 am
I was a hardcore browser, until I discovered Quicksilver. Now I just can’t wait for Spotlight… Quicksilver really opened my eyes to the world of searching.
That being said, for searching to be really efficient, you have to know exactly what you’re searching for. That is not always my case, so browsing remains very useful.
And by the way, I don’t think searching needs less organization than browsing. To get accurate results in your iTunes searches, you need to be very well organized with your MP3 tags! Same goes for iPhoto keywords.
April 22nd, 2005 at 5:19 pm
I am a smart playlist person
April 24th, 2005 at 6:55 am
I’m a browser when I have time, a searcher when in a hurry (which is rare). Also a hider instead of a minimizer.
That said, in my Tiger test runs I found Spotlight quite useful. As soon as someone makes a metadata plugin for Eudora, to search for individual e-mails, I may use it a lot.
April 25th, 2005 at 11:47 am
I’m a hybrid.
April 25th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
In iTunes, I usually Party Shuffle my whole library (or use smart playlists to the same effect). I’ll occasionally browse, and rarely search. For mail, I have a couple of folders with rules, but the vast majority goes into the Inbox for the same reason as Jim Gaynor. In general, I tend to lean towards browsing instead of searching, but that seems to be changing gradually.
As for windows, I exclusively use cmd-tab to switch, closing the ones I’m not using. I do the same on MS Windows.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:56 am
I was a browser, by way of FinderPop, in Classic Mac OS. I was not happy with OS X (no FinderPop, horrible Finder) until I discovered LaunchBar which completely changed how I use my computer. I actually use both LaunchBar and Quicksilver now. I am as deeply disappointed in the Spotlight interface as I have been in the OS X Finder, but I am hopeful that Path Finder (which in my opinion has never lived up to its promise) will rectify all that in version 4 by providing the interface for Spotlight that should have been there in the first place.