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by chris_p 4920 days ago
I really like this! I recently started making simple cocktails, and I am certainly going to use this.

Things I'd like to see: * I prefer milliliters over oz (I didn't even know what it was before I googled it, since I live in Europe), please make this an option * Some form of autocomplete, preferably with a dropdown list (but make sure it doesn't obstruct the next textbox). There's a jquery plugin that does dropdown autocomplete well. * Pressing enter should make the next textbox active (seems more intuitive than tab in this case) * It would be nice if the ingredients in the ingredient list below a cocktail were clickable. Clicking them should add them in the list of selected ingredients and update the cocktails visible.

2 comments

On things to fix:

While I appreciate the use of history, I promise you I don't need to hold my position on the page for every single letter I type in the search box: http://screencast.com/t/1qFwxlz5

I ended up with a history entry for "search results for 'c'", "search results for 'co'", "search results for 'cog'", etc.

Maybe trim this down to only firing after 10s on inactivity in a text input or use onblur? I'm not too sure what the answer is but it (page history) definitely loses any usefulness when architected in this manner.

The primary reason why I am using the history API, is that you can bookmark and send links to a specific search. However I agree that when you are actually using the history, it becomes annoying to have any search that was executed while you were typing in your history.

However when updating the history only every 10s, you might have to wait until you can copy the link to your search from the address bar. And if you aren't typing fast enough there still can be incomplete searches in your history.

Using onblur would be better. But what would you think about, updating the history as soon, as the cursor is moved? I think I like that idea pretty much.

I think http://caniuse.com handles this situation quite well (try searching for something). Notice the short delay between a keypress and the URL updating.
They reset the timout everytime you type another letter. That approach seems to work quite well, unless you are a very slow typer.

However I have just implemented another approach to deal with that issue. Now, the history is updated either when the current field lost focus or when you move the mouse, after you entered something. Please try it out and let me know what you think.

Thank you very much for the feedback. However the problem is, that the ingredients as imported from the websites I crawl aren't in any structured format. I didn't found a reliable way to extract the amount and the actual name of each ingredient. And without that, auto-completion and converting amounts is impossible to do. However if somebody is smarter than me, suggestions (and pull requests) are welcome. :)