Comment 2 for bug 34228

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Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

Launchpad contains many large collections of things (packages, bugs, products, etc) where the only practical way of finding them is by searching. So many people will assume that any omnipresent text field is a global search function, no matter how it is labelled. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010513.html>

(We see this, for example, with the people who search for packages etc in the front page search, come up against "x product does not use Malone" messages, then complain that they can't find anywhere that will let them report a bug.)

If we instead had an omnipresent field where "If ambiguous results occurred the teleportation would fail", that would make people think our search was useless, even while we didn't have one, and even if we later made it the Best Search Evar.

So can we please, please, please start work on a global search instead? Launchpad not having one is like the Yellow Pages not having one. Sure you can navigate by categories instead, but life's too short.

The teleportation idea would be excellent as an "I'm Feeling Lucky"-style button going to the first search result, but only once we have good search as a fallback.