Holehan’s Patterns

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Settings Patterns


(:toc Pattern Overview:)

The Search Settings pattern is work in progress.
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Search Settings (:rating-1:)

Summary

Provide an interface on the main navigation level to search the settings. Highlight search hits on main navigation, settings page?, group and single settings level.

Illustration

Context

  • You have a complex application with a lot of settings
  • Just Browsing Settings is one way for your user to find the setting she is looking for. However, sometimes she doesn't know where to look for or even what setting exactly to look for.

So you are looking for an alternative way to access your application's settings. The approach focuses on quick results rather than on getting familiar with your settings' layout.

Problems

Examples


OSX Preferences Search


Solution

Provide an instant search mechanism that highlights hits on both navigational levels, on the grouping level as well as widget level. Use a thesaurus to match equivalent words to the same meaning. Gray out non hits.

Rationale

Code Snippets

Show Code Example

[Get Code]
  1. #include <iostream.h>
  2.  
  3. main()
  4. {
  5.     cout << "Hello World!";
  6.     return 0;
  7. }

Related Patterns

Pattern.RelatedPattern? Pattern.AlsoRelatedPattern?

Literature

Categories: Settings

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