Back when we first launched ResolutionFinder.org we of course already had many ideas for improvements. This is now the first big push to add these to the site. Of course since then we have even more ideas, but this is still a big jump forward. The main thing we added was the ability to not only search for clauses (aka sections within UN documents), but also documents themselves. Here I was hoping to be able to use the patches for FieldCollapsing for solr, but it turns out they are not yet ready for facetting. So in the end I just added another index just for document searches.

In this process I also merged the document code search into the main search form. Furthermore there is now autosuggest even for phrases for the fulltext search and finally the entire search form is no longer crammed into the left column. This allowed the filters to move up making the entire search more efficient to use. I want to thank Jeremy who did the frontend coding and Stefan who did the bulk of the design updates and of course Liip who continue to provide the hosting. Also Liip co-workers Memi, Bastian and Bart who helped figure out a concept for this udpated UI. Last but not least Thomas for his awesome Symfony sfSolrPlugin.

Here you can see how the layout was before the redesign:

And now how it looks today:

I think one not immediately obvious changes, but that might turn out to be the biggest deal for some is the fact that its now possible to generate a link not only for the terms entered into the search form, but also for any filter selections.

Anyway, the code is all open source, so feel free to checkout the commits and ask questions. And if you see a bug or think of a tweak, report as well .. or better yet send a patch!