"Search this forum" text box

Might I make a suggestion?

When clicking in the 'Search' box, the contents are deleted.
I find this to be unhelpful when refining a search, which is not an uncommon activity!

EG, I might search for "scanf matching newline"
But, I might not get any results (or too many!). So, the obvious thing to do is to refine my search terms - <click> - Oh nuts, I now have to retype "scanf newline"..!

While we're at it, I can't simply search again from the search results page, either. I have to use the browser's Back command.

These gripes aside, the forums are fantastic sources of help and I have found the answers to many puzzles here

the clicker thing doesn't seem to be a problem for me...

umm.. yeah- a "refine results" or "search again" would be cool.

titanium_geek

really? I've tried it with FIrefox and galeon, with the same result.

I'm referring to the text boxes on the forum front pages - eg "Search this Forum:" at the bottom, or "Search any Forum:" at the top", as opposed to the fields on the Search form proper.

maxfacta, I'm not sure what you mean by "refining". Once you click search, you are taken to the search results page, which doesn't have a search box with the text entered in it.

--jeremy

refining:
search for term "theme" - DOH! search is too broad. return to search, click on box, type in "icewm"

umm... tried search this thread- back - click- text stayed. I'm on the mac.

titanium_geek

maxfacta I assume means moving back using the back button on his browser to get to the forum home page.

titanium_geek, it will not do it if you start the thread from the main search page. Only if using the search box on the forum index page.

Yep, I have to use the back button to 'refine' my search.

It would feel more natural to have my search box follow me to the search results page (a la google).

Similarly it would be less frustrating to not have my search terms disappear when I click in the text field to try to modify them!

These things are not ruining the linuxquestions.org experience, by any means. I just thought I'd point them out, since when it comes to computing, I'm inherently lazy by nature. Thus, I'll go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure
I find it more straightforward to click on a particular forum from the forums page, and then type into the "Search this Forum" textbox, than to go to the search page and process a bunch of dropdowns and textfields.