[Koha] Re: Fw: Re: [Koha-devel] strange search results (fwd)

Rachel Hamilton-Williams rachel at katipo.co.nz
Tue Oct 1 10:23:17 NZST 2002


Hi

> On another note, I find that on the demo site, the search fields
> have only a clear button, but no "go" or "submit" button. The
> instructions tell the user to press the "Enter" key, but this
> seems to *unnecessarily depend* on Javascript, so it won't work
> in text browsers, so we have

The "Pressing the Enter Key" function doesn't rely on javascript (there is no 
javascript doing that action, there is javascript moving the cursor to the field 
so that you don't need to click in it). 

As far as I'm aware all browsers will do an implicit submit if there is only one 
(type=text) field in a form. This certainly works on all the browsers we've tried 
it on for that front page, but if you've found one where it doesn't work we can 
put a button in.  We've tried windows/mac/linux Netscape/MSIE/Mozilla, V 4-
6.  

I think that most modern browsers (ie not Netscape 4) will submit a 
form,even if it has many fields, with an "enter" as long as the field you're "in" 
doesn't have a enter "funciton" - like a textarea or if you're in a select box.  I 
haven't tested that so thoroughly, but I think it works.


> - Search in the Intranet module doesn't work in text browsers
>   (lynx, w3m, etc.)

That may be true, we had a "known quantity" when we did the HTML, as the 
library specified what browsers etc they have, so I suspect it's not been 
tested on text only browsers.  If a library wanted to use it with text only 
browsers presumably they can just change the templates etc.  I would 
expect if you wanted to use it in a "text mode" you might want a quite 
different layout so that  the right things "follow on".

> - Search in the Internet module doesn't work if the user disabled
>   Javascript (for security reasons, for example)

All searches or just some? AFAIK we tested it without javascript turned on 
and it was fine, so perhaps something has snuck un recently.  Are you sure 
you mean the internet (ie opac) search, or do you mean the intranet 
(librarian) bits?

> - Some computers may call the "Enter" key by some other name

Sure - you'd be welcome to contribute some other words, we decided that 
having "press enter or return" would be more confusing than illuminating, and 
our Mac friends said they knew what "enter" meant.

> BTW, the search on the OPAC module does not have this unnecessary
> Javascript dependency.

Nope that's on purpose.  We didn't consider it a huge imposition to require libraries
 to allow javascript from what would be an internal server. The coding for the internally
 oriented module is more tailored to the actual libraries who are running the 
code, the type of browsers and "policies" they operate under.

If you have a library that requires something different, then they might like to 
put together some templates more to their own liking and make them 
available to people who have similar requirements.

Thanks heeps for the input 

Cheers
Rachel
_____________________________________________________________

Rachel Hamilton-Williams             Katipo Communications            
WEBMISTRESS                          ph  021 389 128 or +64 04 934 1285 
mailto:rachel at katipo.co.nz           PO Box 12487, Wellington
http://www.katipo.co.nz              New Zealand
Koha Open Source Library System
http://www.koha.org





More information about the Koha mailing list