Ask Testing Advanced Search UI

Richard MacManus stumbled on AskX.com, a testing user interface for Ask’s search engine. Ask X, which is being offered up to random Ask searchers, features a UI more advanced than that being offered on any current mainstream search engine, although the features are mostly the same as on the current Ask.com.

Ask X switches to a three-pane interface, moving the Zoom feature to the left. Zoom, which uses clustering to move to more or less specific search queries, is a killer Ask feature that usually gets ignored, because of its placement where ads are usually put. This move alone is a brilliant one, exposing the feature and hopefully encouraging more people to use it. The search box is also contained in this left pane (not wasting the top of the page, list most engines do), and it uses a search suggestions feature, just like Google Suggest.

The middle […]

Original post by Nathan Weinberg and software by Elliott Back