Release Candidate One with Chris Clark

The distinction between text fields and search fields is one of the more subtly impressive things about Mac OS X’s design. Not visually impressive like, say, a reflective dock or a backup retrieval system in deep space, but impressive because it’s actually useful. It has semantic weight and, unlike the search fields on so many other platforms, you know what it does without reading the label.

That’s why it’s upsetting to see it abused, as Clayton points out. If I launch Facebook with the intention of looking at someone’s profile I have to ensure I don’t type their name into the first round-ended text field I see, lest Facebook’s twitteresque question “What’s on your mind?” be answered with, say, the name of an ex-girlfriend. When it comes to spotting search fields, false negatives are harmless. False positives not so much.

And while Apple’s own Messages app (née SMS) was the first defector from within, the offense isn’t always so cut and dry. Firefox’s “awesomebar”—a location field and history search in one—straddles an interesting line: when the input field has such a dual purpose, does that make it a search field? My gut says no, and I’d sooner see Mozilla square it up.