[Patternfly] Moving forward with the Search pattern

[Matt Carrano]

Yesterday Robb, Kyle, Brian and I met on several topics concerning PatternFly and the subject of Search came up.  We agreed that there is a need for a basic search widget that can be added to our library and that Robb should take the action to prototype this.  I wanted to make sure, however, that this leverages the pattern work on contextual search that had been done last year.

I went back and reviewed the pattern draft for contextual search (https://www.patternfly.org/wikis/patterns/pattern-development/draft-patterns/contextual-search/) and wanted to propose a few changes that I think will make it easier to move forward with this.  My proposal is to separate this into three patterns:

- Basic Search that will include the "Basic Contextual Search" functionality.
- Attribute Search that will include the "Attribute-Based Contextual Search" functionality.
- "Smart Search" that will include other optional features like suggestions and the ability to bookmark or recall saved searches.

My reasoning for this approach is to be able to introduce this functionality to the PF library in phases.  While I think lots of very innovative design work went into the original draft of this pattern, to me, many of the features that make up what I'm calling "smart search" are unproven from both a technical feasibility and usability standpoint.  What I'd like to move ahead with is a Basic Search pattern/widget (which I believe has received some testing) as this seems to be where there is the most need.  We can phase in other extensions to this after we've had time for more prototyping and testing.

I'd also like to move away from the term "contextual search," unless people object.  A quick Google search reveals that this term is being used by Google, Yahoo, and other to reference the use of contextual metadata (e.g. your location) to refine search results.  This is certainly not what we were talking about in this pattern.  

Thoughts?


Matt