Classic shows : Podcast 33: Adding search to your site

In their 33rd podcast Paul and Marcus look at how to create the most effective in-site search facility, the differences between RGB, CMYK, Pantone and HEX, and the importance of keeping up-to-date with web development techniques.

The estimated time to read this article is less than a minute

Posted on: Monday, May 8, 2006

Podcast: Download (18.5MB)

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Main feature

This week’s show is mainly based around a recent article I wrote on creating a great search facility. So if you want to know what we cover I recommend you check that out.

Techno-buster

The techno-buster section looks at the different colour formats around and which is used for what. In particular we look at whether you can automatically convert from one format to the other or whether some human judgement is required.

Question time

We also discuss a great question sent in from Debbie that asks how we find the time to keep up with all the latest developments in web design. Specifically we discuss the need for managers to assign time for their web design staff to keep on top of what is a constantly evolving industry.

Web Design Resources

Finally we look at what has to be the ultimate web designer’s resource, the Web Developers Handbook. This site has links to pretty much every web design resource you could ever need.

View the Web Developers Handbook

In the trade these are known as calls to action. Feel free to take your pick!

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http://johnamartin.net John Martin

The K in CMYK refers to the printing term “key” which is shorthad for “key plate”, which traditionally was used to press outlines and structure to colours in print.
http://www.boagworld.com Paul Boag

Ah ha! That makes sense. Thanks a lot John. I feel educated.
Shira

Marcus,
This must be the PC version of the joke. I’ve heard it years ago, but with a Belgian bloke…
No offence meant
J

I don’ t know I’ve always heard black was named K because B was already taken for blue. Just what I was taught…
http://www.compscigrad.com Jason Swaby

It’s actually both. When they realized B was already taken in RGB, they refered to K for key plate. My reference is an into Digital Photography tutorial on lynda.com. :)
Chris Owens

More CYMK stuff than you can shake a stick at:
- CMYK color Model at Wikipedia
Chris Owens

Apologies for the typo and over-capitalisation.
http://www.theunsigned.net/ Daniel Chesterton

Got a couple of questions about the podcast.
You mentioned that Headscape use an open source search engine system. If you don’t mind me asking, what is it?
You also mentioned how to not make the user feel to dumb, by not using things such as “Did you mean: ____”, personally I love this feature in Google as my spelling is awful :p What would you recommend instead if you don’t like this method?
Hope you can provide me with some answers, another great podcast guys!!
http://webmonkey.wordpress.com Laura F.

Loved the show. I am working on one of these search engines for a site, but in my opinion, the site is too small for a search engine (five pages, one has lots of definitions). The client is set on a search box on every page, so here I am trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
http://www.boagworld.com Paul Boag

Hi Daniel,
to be honest I am not sure exactly what we use. Its not an area I deal with but I will pass on your comment to Mark (our head Techie) and if he has a chance I am sure he will respond.
As for your second question… I agree that corrections like “Did you mean” are great. What I was refering to is error messages like “You have entered your search term incorrectly” which is unhelpful and not neccessarily true.
http://reymendoza.blogspot.com Rey Mendoza

From what I have read the letter K in the CMYK, is supposed to be the last letter in the word black since the letter b has already been taken by blue.
Surprising to know that there are other explanations to this. :)
Rey Mendoza,Jr.
Mark Crawley

@Daniel: Hi – we use Swish-e (swish-e.org) and have been very pleased with it. Although it took us a bit longer than an hour to set up (unlike the wonderful comment at the top of their home page), once we’d integrated it with our site it’s been hassle-free.
http://www.theunsigned.net/ Daniel Chesterton

Thanks Paul and Mark for taking the time to find out and reply, I think I will have a play around with this!
http://www.marvirtual.com José Monteiro

CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Knight)
Tom Turrell-Croft

Great podcast very informative as usual.
I think opensearch (http://opensearch.a9.com) is worth mention, both firefox 2.0 and I.E. 7 will support sites with opensearch.
The great advantage of this is that you can tell the browser all about your search function and how it works, this means that the user can use the search field built into the browser.
In the future you could possibly design a site without needed to resort to adding a search field directly to the content of your site.
http://www.creativecomponent.com Alan Houser

I’d like to add: There’s a great search tool we’ve used called SiteLevel at sitelevel.whatuseek.com. There’s a handy synonyms list and it’s configurable for text, HTML, .DOC, .XLS, .PDF, .SWF and .RTF… Free service will place ads on results page. The Pro version has scheduled re-indexing, Jump-Words {cool} and no ads {cooler still}.
michael

I just found your podcast and love it.
In another I learned of “Practical Web Design Magazine” and went looking for it. In the process, I found this little commentary (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archive/2004/10/practical-web-design-magazine)
and wondered about your response? I was going to post it to the PWDM site, but couldn’t find any contact information. I tried the search feature there and it didn’t turn up anything, not even any helpful hints about how I might follow up on my 0 return search.
Having just listened to this podcast today in the car, I thought I’d post it here. =)
Love the show. I’m looking forward to listening to the PWDM cast.

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