Search

[sscheske]

Hi - We find the search we have included with Webhelp lists too many hits and is slow. Is there a plan to improve the search feature? MadCap Flare offers a much better search experience. We are not interested in using the Google Search plug-in since it shows ads. Hope you can help.
Shari

[cosmin_andrei]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us!

Oxygen XML WebHelp offers the possibility to customize the search engine. More details are available here:
https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/ ... ngine.html

[sscheske]

Hello - Are there any plans to improve the Search in Oxygen Webhelp? We have been comparing MadCap to Oxygen, and Oxygen search is much weaker and provides too many hits. Since most customers use Search to use help, the Search functionality has the biggest weight in our decision.

[Costin]

Hello,

We would appreciate if you could provide us more details on what specific features you are looking for or what issues you have encountered with the current search engine implementation.
For the issues, to investigate, please also send some sample complete DITA Map files hierarchy in an as minimal form as possible to our official support email - support@oxygenxml.com - which we could use to reproduce the issues.

Regards,
Costin

[sscheske]

Hello,

You can view our help and experience the search here: help.sabacloud.com

Thanks,
Shari

[beniamin_savu]

Hi,

We investigated the search problem you mentioned above. When running a query on the search page we noticed that the files that store the search index and the other files requested by the search page take almost 30 seconds to load. This happens only the first time the page is loaded. After all of the page resources are fully loaded, they will be cached by the browser and the next time a query is run on the search page, the search result will be quick.

Unfortunately the slowness of the search seems to be happening due to the server having a low response time.

Best regards,
Beniamin Savu
Oxygen WebHelp Team
http://www.oxygenxml.com

[sscheske]

Hi,
Thank you for your suggestion to check the web server. I'm wondering if you could share your roadmap for improving the search experience. As you know, search is the primary method users use to find content in the online help so it is an important factor in deciding which tool to use going forward.

Thank you!
Shari Scheske

[alin]

Hello,

The current search engine available in WebHelp Responsive is implemented in JavaScript. This means that the search operation is performed on the client side. The search engine needs that all the required resources (including the search index files) to be downloaded on the user's local machine.
Large index files together with low network speeds can slow down the search process, which in turn can result in a bad user experience.

We have some oncoming improvements for the search functionality in the WebHelp Responsive output. We plan to release a new Content Indexing and Search Service that can be embedded in the WebHelp Responsive output. This means that the indexing process and the search operation will be performed server side.

We will notify this thread when the new Search Service becomes available.

Regards,
Alin