Full screen search goes beta

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We’ve been really interested in search lately. Last month we improved our mobile site by adding search type-ahead suggestions, term-by-term search building, and a larger input box. Those changes were really helpful but we weren’t quite done yet. As we thought more and more about search it became clear that we weren’t using our usable space very well. Screen real estate is precious and you have to use it very wisely on mobile. Rather then squishing all of our search results inside a fraction of the screen we’re testing using the whole screen for search results. When you search on the beta you’ll notice that the search interface now uses your whole screen rather then a tiny and hard-to-tap portion.

Most of our users have said that when they search they are moving forward not backward. As a result we want to focus their experience on what they are actually doing: search. By using the whole screen we can better focus our users and provide them with a richer experience. We’ll continue to iterate on the design as we get feedback from you.
As we mentioned last time, anyone can try new features by opting in to the beta. We also made it easy to track the current release features by going here. Please opt in and give use feedback. Don’t be shy, help make Wikipedia on mobile a success!

Tomasz Finc
Director of Mobile and Special Projects

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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[…] “Screen real estate is precious and you have to use it very wisely on mobile. Rather then squishing all of our search results inside a fraction of the screen we’re testing using the whole screen for search results,” Tomasz Finc, Director of Mobile and Special Projects at Wikimedia, wrote. […]

[…] Tomasz Finc, Boss of Mobile and Special Projects at Wikimedia, wrote.The new search feature looks rather slick […]