[Enhancement] Replace or clarify concept of 'pinned' keywords about mark-my-search

[buckleyGI]

Hi Ator. Thanks for posting this issue.

Its still not clear why the pin is useful? What does it make possible if it is present (or not)?
I both cases, coming from a search engine or not, I can edit the keywords.

One low hanging fruit suggestion for usability is to give the buttons a tooltip

[ator-dev]

Here's a description of what happens:

• When you use a search engine, Mark My Search gets invoked automatically and gathers keywords. We cannot assume that the user wanted these specific keywords, but highlighting happens based on the fact that they might.

  • The pin button shows up because the keyword array is given low priority.

• If you search when keywords are already present, we have to choose whether or not to overwrite them. If the keyword array has low priority (shows the pin button), Mark My Search will simply discard the old keywords in favour of the new ones.

So clicking the pin is a way of telling Mark My Search "yes, I want these keywords - don't overwrite them". This also happens if you add or edit a keyword.

[ator-dev]

One low hanging fruit suggestion for usability is to give the buttons a tooltip

Agreed, and while I have dynamic 'metrics' tooltips for keyword buttons, I have neglected them for all other controls. I have made a note and will add tooltips in future!

Do you think something like "Do not replace with searched keywords" or "Keep keywords when searching" would make sense?

[buckleyGI]

Hmmm this is something that I need to found out when using searchmarkers more. It is clicking a bit but I haven't had a use case where I needed it. "Keep these keywords when searching" sounds good.
Also, the fact that the pin disappears (and is not a toggle) was a bit confusing => What did I just do and can't undo

[ator-dev]

I haven't had a use case where I needed it

Thinking more about it, I can see that this might not even be an important feature. After all, most of the time you just want to start from a single search and find everything from there. It adds complexity to the codebase, clutters the UI without a clear reason, and is essentially opaque behaviour that only sometimes has an effect; it's also a lot harder to describe than I realised.

In view of this, I am proposing a different solution. I could make a check that the user has not left the search page before overwriting, but this seems too much like an even more opaque special case. Instead, I could give the user specific control:

• When a search is detected which produces different keywords from the current ones, a 'refresh' button is shown in the toolbar (where the pin button would be).

• If you ignore it, nothing happens and it will disappear when you navigate somewhere else; if you press it, the keywords are immediately replaced by the ones detected in your search.

• A keyboard shortcut would be made available for this action.

This is consistent with the normal behaviour of Mark My Search - 'refresh' is essentially the equivalent of turning it off and letting it gather new keywords (pressing Alt+Shift+M then reloading).

[ator-dev]

Implemented for v1.12.0 according to the above behaviour, with the tweak that a search which simply removes keywords is not sufficient. The "auto overwriting" feature has been baked into Mark My Search since v1.0 - with code being built for and around it since then - so it has taken significant refactoring to remove it. I have maintained a high standard for code quality so the process has been relatively painless, and with testing there should be no additional bugs on release. I took the opportunity to improve the surrounding code in what was already a simplification process.

I think the icon is acceptable, but it will definitely be a candidate for replacement (along with the 'eye') when I find time for an icon overhaul.

[ator-dev]

Shipped with v1.12. Anyone who has problems with the current behaviour is welcome to reopen this issue.