Philosophy: People often find themselves coming to a website knowing what they're
looking for, but because of the wide array of server languages and developer
preferences out there, guessing urls is almost impossible. Artificially
Intelligent error pages is a start at solving this problem, but it only helps
those soles brave enough to try guessing.
Search engines are another good way to solve this issue, but they all require another
page load. Intuitive menu systems are almost pointless, and never worth the effort
that goes into them (though letting a menu slip into obsoleteness is a more... worser...
crime). What's another alternative? Real-time searching.
Modern, expansive websites these days always have their entire site map stored in a
database in one way or another. These menus are pulled in their completion on every
page load. What we can do is re-use these database transactions and create a real-time
"page locater" on the side of every page below the menu or in a similar position. A more
advanced implementation might open up the menu to the #1 result and when the user hits enter,
it would take them there.
Try out this beta/pre-1.0 version of real-time search below:
AaronSmiley.com
