Attractive Open Source Search Interfaces?

An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that manages an online database for the political market. We add to this DB daily with updates from a variety of sources and our customers then search through this content via our Solr/Lucene search engine. My problem is, our search interface is a little, well, basic and I would love to know if there are any feature-rich open source alternatives out there. The only one I can find is Flamenco, and while that seems strong on categorisation, that seems to be about the height of it."

Comments

KISS

[Mr. Sketch]

    <input type="text" name="q" title="Enter your search terms" />
    <input type="submit" value="Search" title="Submit your search request" />
</form>

Anything more complex will probably aggravate your users.

Re:KISS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only half of the battle. What about results?

Re:KISS

[shish]

My point is that it works for google and google allows advanced queries very nicely

Google also has hundreds of the world's best computer scientists working on natural language parsing techniques, and they still need a load of documentation saying "if you want to use this function, please type your query according to this specific format" (which is no better than having separate input boxes IMO; in fact for the advanced search that's exactly what they do)

Re:KISS

[Hurricane78]

KISS is retarded. Because simplicity does not always equal efficiency. Efficiency equals efficiency. Plain KISS makes you end up with stuff that is too “simple” to be useful, like Clippy, MS Bob, or Notepad. The other extreme is just as stupid, and gives you things like VI and Emacs, with a wall as a learning “curve”.

The optimum is obvious: Balanced in the middle, relative to the user’s needs. More power when he needs it, less complexity when he doesn’t.

I, for one, don’t call anything that does not at least have boolean operations, property fields (like “site:slashdot.org”) and regular expressions a search that fits my needs and level of power.

Are people who want less somehow better? Or why are they preferred?
Rhetorical question. I know why they are preferred: Because they are louder, and think they are entitled to get it pre-chewed.

Also, what is the point of allowing only one way? Nobody is better.
Add a multiple-choice element, that lets you choose plain text, boolean-enhanced (like google) and full regexps. Makes everyone happy, hurts nobody.

Maybe next time you don’t apply KISS to your method of searching for a solution. :)

Re:Sphinx Search

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, Sphinx is used on Slashdot ...

That's really not the glowing recommendation you thought it would be...

Re:Sphinx Search

[prestomation]

Right. Slashdot search is HORRIBLE. I've better luck finding old articles with Google

What sort of database?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you talking about searching web pages or a database and presenting the results as web pages? If the latter, then wht's the database?

Re:Why bother with open source?

[khellendros1984]

I wouldn't say that GIMP is more complex than Photoshop. I've tried using Photoshop, and it looks like an unorganized muddle of garbage to me. I *get* GIMP, though.

Linux is just another Unix, but thankfully, a bit more modern and progressive than many of the others. It's as complex as it needs to be, and no more....that's not taking into account the various windowing environments of various qualities (although Windows 7's interface reminds me more of Gnome than it does Windows XP, somehow).

Then again, maybe I'm weird. My two cents.