I think it would be nice to have a sort of introduction video for DDG which quickly explains what it is and presents the differences from other search engines.
I'm thinking of a video with voice/text explaining while screencast segments are shown and the duck does stuff.
It would probably get some attention and would be easy to spread (it could possibly be shown on the about page and uploaded to various sites).
It shouldn't be too long and not try to explain everything. It should target people with different amounts of knowledge about computers (not too complicated or simple).
I could do quite a lot of the work on this, but I would at least need script ideas (what should be said or happen? structure?) before I can even begin.
Please reply with some ideas or feedback if you have any.
There has just been some short discussion about the result pages in the style topic. This is a new topic for collecting ideas (post your own ideas if you have them) regarding the look and feel of the result pages and getting feedback on these ideas.
Links on the side turned into sidebar/corner: Thelinks on the side of the result pages containing links to various pages and !bang searches don't move when you scroll and feel like they are 'hanging'.
This could be solved by visibly separating the links from the rest of the page and/or attaching them to an edge of the page. This would result in something like a sidebar or corner (quick mockups).
The links could also be made to scroll with the page, which is what I would prefer (The search box moves with the page, and the links will always feel a bit attached to the search box).
New icons: The current icons for the side links are a bit blurry and there are better sets out there. If you know a good set or have an opinon regarging icon styles, reply in here. We also have to consider the licensing issue (Some licences wouldn't allow use on DDG).
Change topic and meaning lists: Sometimes I just want to do a quick web search and don't feel like scrolling through a long text or clicking on the [web links] link. It would be nice if DDG limited how many topics or meanings are shown and displaying a message if they are too many. If the user then decides to browse topics/meanings, display these lists in an expanded state until the search is edited manually (insert a parameter in the links to check this).
Lastly, I can see how complicated the code for the results page is and find things which could be removed or rewritten and retain their style (not sure how the javascript would be affected). But maybe I shouldn't start poking around in that.
(I'm sorry for wasting Mr. Weinberg's valuable time once more)
I just wanted to share a userstyle I have made which changes the search field on DDG.
It's not much, but it's still enhances the overall look of the page. Works in most popular browsers, but not IE (not even with IE7Pro because IE doesn't support certain selectors and a lot of elements have no id or class).
The current favicon doesn't look too good, as it's just a scaled down version of the big logo. It would be nice to have something a little bit more clear to look at. I've redrawn the logo in favicon size (with 4 variations), making it look a lot more clear:
I'm currently using the 2nd one, both in my search bar and on the actual site (userscript).
I would be pleased if one of these or a better design were used instead of the current one.