Search icon needs to be on right side of searchbox

[Jeremy Bícha]

Please move the search icon to the right side of the searchbox. Otherwise, Unity is inconsistent with the majority of apps used in Ubuntu...for instance: Firefox, System Settings and Nautilus.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: unity 4.8.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-8.11-generic 3.0.1
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,decor,mousepoll,vpswitch,regex,animation,snap,expo,move,compiztoolbox,place,grid,imgpng,gnomecompat,wall,ezoom,workarounds,resize,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,scale,session,unityshell]
Date: Thu Aug 18 04:37:12 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-06-17 (61 days ago)

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

By search icon do you mean the search spinner or some other part?

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

By "search icon", I was referring to the magnifying glass symbol.

I'm not sure where the throbber ("wait while I'm searching") should go. It definitely shouldn't be in the way of where the user is trying to type, so perhaps in the right side of the searchbox...or maybe in the results area. I don't have a strong sense of where it should go, except that I don't think it should go in the left side of the searchbox or obscure the search entry text.

[Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan)]

Certainly not clear that this should be the case so added Ayatana Design for some input.

[Daniel Planas Armangue (daniplanas.a)]

Your point is truth that it's inconsistent with the rest of apps, but if you stop one moment and think about it, you probably will change your vision.

In occidental culture we read left to right, and icon in left its the first think your eyes view, and your brain automatically knows that its a search box. It's the better design choice.

http://mybiggestcomplaint.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/safari-search-box.jpg

look some good searchboxes in the web and i hope i convince you. The wrong are the rest of the gtk apps.

But these it's only one more opinion.
cheers.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Daniel, instead of directing me to look at good searchboxes on the web, could you point to specific examples?

Here's some right search icon examples:
Firefox
Bing.com
Windows 7
GNOME 3

Notable left example:
Apple

Google doesn't use a search icon, but the "Search" button is to the right because that makes sense.

It is non-trivial to attempt to convert all search boxes to be on the left side to keep consistency but if the GNOME standard is search icon on the right, it shouldn't be too hard for the remaining holdouts to do the Right Thing.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Ah, I see Chromium's addressbar uses a search icon on the left (in place of the favicon). However, in Chromium's preferences, there is an integrated search box without a search icon but the X to clear the searchbox is on the right. KDE, in my brief searching, also doesn't use a search icon but does put the "X to clear" on the right.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

There is an important difference between search fields where you have to press Enter or click a button to search, and search fields -- like in the Dash -- that perform a live search as you type. Where you have to click a button, the search icon is that button. Where the search is live, the search icon exists only to show that the field is a search field.

That explains some of the inconsistency between search fields in Ubuntu software, but not all.

Program ................. Search icon .. Clear button

Search fields that do live search:
Dash .................... left ......... left
Shotwell ................ left ......... right
Banshee ................. left ......... right
Evolution ............... left ......... right
Rhythmbox ............... no ........... right
System Settings ......... right ........ no
Ubuntu Software Center .. left ......... right
Chromium Preferences .... no ........... right

Search fields that don't do live search:
Chromium address field .. left ......... no
Nautilus ................ right ........ no
Firefox ................. right ........ no
Thunderbird ............. right ........ no

From those examples I can see only two clear conclusions:
(1) The Dash is inconsistent with everything else in having its clear button on the left.
(2) System Settings is inconsistent with everything else in having live search with a search icon on the right.

So this bug report seems to be invalid, but probably there should be a separate one about the clear button.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

@mpt thanks for looking into this. I also noticed that GNOME Shell's Activities Overview uses the same pattern as System Settings: right/right in their live search box. I opened https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659284 against System Settings so we'll see what happens.

How about we leave the search icon where it is for now and retitle this bug to "Clear icon should be on right side of searchbox" so that part can be fixed?