idea: search page

[sbliven]

Summary

Idea: add a page dedicated to search

Scicat is currently very oriented towards data collection. Adding a site-wide search interface would reorient towards data reuse and Findability.

Mockups

Initial state:

After focusing the search bar & typing a few characters:

Main ideas

• This could become the homepage for some sites (homepage is configurable in the frontend settings)
• Minimal, uncluttered look
• Button to get to datasets list in one click
  • Could also have 2-3 separate buttons for common pages or filters. Eg: My Datasets, Public Datasets, Proposals, Ingestor, Samples, etc (not too many)
• Focusing the search would scroll down and expand the suggestions dropdown
• Site-wide text search, with sections for Datasets, Proposals, Samples, Published Data, Instruments, etc. Result list has 1-3 results for each section that match the current query
• Results update (async) as the query is typed
• Also suggests search terms as well as search results

Inspiration

• Google's single-searchbar look
• Github's search bar, which includes suggestions for common searches as well as results from Repositories, filenames, code, and a 'Chat with Copilot' option