New Search Project Viewer Released

Just when you thought it was safe to go searching again, it seems that Linden Lab are tinkering with search and this time it’s apparently, bigger, longer and uncut… I mean Fast, Easy, Fun …. no no wait wait it’s delivering more relevant, faster results! The blog post, here, will also cause some consternation because new search will not be implemented by Linden Lab in viewer 1.23 and the consequences of that are hidden away in the FAQ :

What will happen to old search?

The new search system will replace the current SL Viewer search when testing and quality assurance are completed. Viewer 1.23 search will not be affected until the new search system is released for general availability in the released Second Life Viewer. At that time, Viewer 1.23’s search functionality will be impaired; specifically, All and Group search will no longer work in Viewer 1.23.

However for now, let’s take a look at this new search, there’s the good, land sales is vastly improved, it really couldn’t have got any worse, but it’s vastly improved, events are also improved, however paging has gone away to be replaced with a never ending scrolling…well it ends eventually, if you’ve used new Twitter you’ll be familiar with this functionality. There’s also the issue that there is no search button still as well as no way to sort your maturity ratings for search. However it does look rather funky if you open search without entering a search term:

When you don’t enter a search term, you get the new funky homepage for search, with Events happening now showing and it’s about bloody time events got a boost, you also have a set of classified adverts on show which whoosh along of their own accord, rather quickly I should add, so you need to keep track.

Clicking the destination guide gives a similar look, classifieds are whooshing along but instead of events you get destinations:

Now when I scrolled through the destinations there were only about six, so that needs sorting. However you can click on view all destinations to find more destinations and you can even then further filter down the destinations by selecting a destination category, events work this way too which means, at long bloody last, we can browse rather than search these sections. Hooray! However if you do want to search them, you can and then when you click on a result, whether you’ve searched or browsed, it works in a similar fashion to the current search in viewer 2, you get a mini blurb with more details and teleport buttons, more details opens up the full result in the sidebar, still too many steps perhaps?

Events work the same way, but events also allow you to browse what’s happening now or to select future dates and times, it’s well presented:

Groups on the other hand need to be searched, if you don’t enter a search term and click on groups, then you just get taken back to the main search homepage. However if you do search groups, then selecting works in similar fashion to events and destinations, a short blurb:

The same goes for places:

And Everything:

However, functionality improvements to events and destinations are welcome, the big improvement, the absolutely massive improvement, the improvement to beat all search improvements, is that land sales search is much improved, I mean much. The first thing to notice is that you can filter your results by price or land size, as you see fit, this is a major improvement on viewer 2 land sales search:

Then you can select whether you want to search for parcels on homesteads or full sims on mainland or estate, then you get your results:

However if you can see the headings, I can now sort by name, type, L$ price, Area or L$ per metre price, I chose to sort by area:

Then there’s this new mysterious field of searching for land for rent, which takes us back to the FAQ:

How do I list my land as a rental?

You have three options to list a land rental that appears in search:

Classified ad
Set land category in About Land window
Set the parcel description

In addition, if you are listing a rental on a private estate, you need to set the parcel for sale. We recommend that you set the price as the weekly rental price, and disclose any other setup fees or deposits in the description.

Hmmm, interesting, people have long been asking for estate land sales to be rentals, if you’re not allowing resale, then it’s a rental, if you do allow resale, well they still have to rent but so do we estate owners! We’ll see how this develops.

So does this mean I’m happy? Well for a start, I haven’t even tested properly for relevancy, I still want a search button like we had in 1.23 as well as the mini search window at the top right, that should be for people who want to quick search, a search button would take people right to the search homepage where they can browse events, destinations and land sales without having to enter a search term.

The lack of paging troubles me and although search does open up again with your last search if you don’t enter a new term (by clicking the mini search window), it takes you back to the top of the results, the lack of paging confuses the whole, save my last search result issue.

There’s definitely going to be controversy about all and groups going from viewer 1.23 search but reading between the lines, in my opinion, it looks like all of the old search functionality is going to be turned off at some point, I can recall this issue being mentioned at a Phoenix viewer office hour so it’s not something I’m plucking out of thin air.

However, there are definitely signs of improvement here with search functionality, whether that equates to results in search performance is another issue, but functionality does look to be improving.