change notes 2023-06-26

In order to explore search interfaces and generative search experiences (by playing with the underlying technologies and interactions), I developed a new ‘search-centric’ format and functionality for my website.

This is actively being developed. Neither a designer nor developer, I am not presenting these search experiences as ‘the answer’, but using them to think & write with.

• Made the search bar the main focus on the landing page and in a revised header.s
  • Removed nav-bar and left-sidebar.
• Added search functionality built around Lunr.js.
  • Added search-links across the top of the search-bar
    • Added search/about page to discuss how the search tool is made.
    • Added search/guide page.
    • Added sitemap page.
    • Added feedback page.
  • atop search results:
    • Added simplistic facet counts & links to reformulation
    • Added count of search results (with link to comment re "Exactly [#] results in search/about that is critical of Google’s deception/misinformation re the same).
  • in search results:
    • Added tags.
    • Added both hand-curated and generated snippets (currently w/ ), and snippet labels (with contextual link to explanation)
  • Added search-suggestions.
    • including both hand-curated and dynamic suggestions (with labels).
  • Added “!bangs” (functioning also akin to go/links).
  • Added exact phrase matching (not supported by base Lunr).
• Added special tagged posts: changes, updates, tweets. These posts do not appear in the posts list, but in corresponding pages.
  • Slowly converting annotated tweets to posts (backdated to the date of the tweet(s), annotations will be identified by date).
• Added tag pages (and simplified presentation of tag links atop pages and at bottom of search results)
• Added pposts page (listing “possible posts, potential posts, plausible posts, planned posts, partial posts, or perfect posts?” via a Jekyll collection)
  • key initial planned posts: a series on generative search.
• Added background image to all pages (w/ alt and caption).
• A note on a citation technique: To include a pandoc citation in a page’s bibliography without in-text citation with jekyll-pandoc (the standard nocite in the YAML appears not to work) you can just add the citations to a div and add a style="display: none;". Example in the postcolonial localization in search post.
• Added website header to the diss pages for consistency.
• Added title and subtitle to landing page.
• Added [hire-me] page (includes link to a recent LinkedIn post describing some of what I’m looking for, resume, and CV).
• Added differentiation in about pages: about (about me), site, and search/about. In the latter two, in addition to text description, I also link to both pre-processing and online scripts in /scripts and /js. site now includes a tool heading that discusses the tools I’m using: For this last round of changes I’ve explored several tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and APIs, Google’s Bard, SGE, and Code Tips, Perplexity AI, You.com’s YouChat, Phind, GitHub Copilot in VS Code, and Tabnine in Sublime Text. I also explored using search on TikTok to quickly refresh my understanding of options with CSS.
• Heavily refactored with Bootstrap.
• 2023-06-26 16:51:29 Removed the background image due to difficulties making it responsive.