For example, if you want to find references to "boron" in the Annuals forum, this is what you get.

Don't forget to click on the thumb photo to see the complete picture. In this example, we now have the tedious task of reading through those two individual threads, page by page, message by message, to find the specific messages that mentioned "boron".

It would be an enormous help if the NGA Search went beyond the message threads,, beyond the thread pages, to the individual message(s) containing the search target, in this case "boron".

I am requesting that the NGA Search be enhanced to go to the individual message level. For example, those displayed dates could simply be links to the target messages.

I am further requesting that a PDF help document on using the enhanced NGA Search in various ways be produced and made available to site users, similar to the way a helpful PDF was recently made available containing Written instructions on how to customize your settings .

There is a goldmine of useful gardening information buried here on the NGA Site, and an Enhanced Search Function would go a long way toward making it easier for users to "dig it out".

Pretty please.

ZM

Dave might get around to that, but have you tried using the Ctrl+F keys. This was a very short search, and only took a few seconds. I only saw one page for each thread.
But I can go through lots of pages in a short time using the ctrl+F keys when looking for a particular item. You might try it till Dave comes up with something better.

Seedfork said:This was a very short search, and only took a few seconds. I only saw one page for each thread.
But I can go through lots of pages in a short time using the ctrl+F keys when looking for a particular item.

Hello Larry,

You may have seen only one page for the 279-message thread, but I have my preferences set at 20 messages per page, so the It can be fun to breed your own zinnias thread currently has 14 pages for me .

Many of the individual messages are fairly long, and it can take a while to read through just one of them in that thread.

As I recall, the "boron" reference was on just the 3rd page of the thread, but it still took a few minutes to find. It would have taken a long time to find if it was in the 279th message.

ZM

Hi Zenman,

This is an issue I've raised before. I too, would like to see the ability to go directly to relevant posts, although even to the correct page would be a big help (searching through a 20-page thread for a possible reference is just painful).

Hopefully Dave can add this soon.

I have mine set to 500 items per page, it takes just a few seconds to find 17 hits on Boron.

I would also "like" to go to a specific post -- but, as Seedfork said, setting your posts/page to a larger number makes it much easier to search through the thread using Ctrl+F. Zenman, is there a specific reason you don't want to change the setting for number of posts/page?

I have set mine to 100 posts. I find (even on my reasonably powerful machine) that it gets slower with increasing numbers of posts.

Just for clarification, since everyone can set up their own page length, the system would not be able to specify a page number for a particular post as it caries from one member to another.

I have my page size sent to 300 items so that I can scroll through without having to scroll-page-scroll-page-scroll-page. When set to a high number, the <CTRL>-f works very well indeed.

Having a high page item count only slows the page load by a small amount. Plus, if you are using a wireless device, having a high count could save on your data limit as the system wouldn't be sending all of the page header/footer info every 20 items.

I think you'd find that the header/footer data would be trivial with modern compression and caching in browsers. Additionally, longer pages requires more memory to render, so older mobile devices may become sluggish.

And whilst everyone can set up their own page length, that doesn't actually prevent the system from being designed to provide a page link. The website database stores your preferences and would know when person X runs a search. It should not be hard to write it to check the user's preferences for the number of posts per page, then calculate the page number.

I have updated the search engine so that it includes a new column for "Post" that you can click on to view just the post that matched your search query. You can see it in action in this example search:

https://garden.org/forums/sear...

dave said:I have updated the search engine so that it includes a new column for "Post" that you can click on to view just the post that matched your search query. You can see it in action in this example search:

Hi Dave,
That is perfect. Thank you so very much.

ZM

Very nice new search feature!! Thanks Dave!

Dave, thank you ever so much. Using a key word type of search really does make things a lot easier. I thought it would be far more difficult to code and implement.

Oh THANK YOU Dave, I had given up on doing searches for the reasons ZenMan had!

I think this is a huge improvement to the search feature -- looking forward to trying it out!

Thank you!!!!!

Ask and you shall receive Thanks, Dave!