Can you add a button to the new search feature that can be clicked with the mouse, functioning the same as hitting ‘Enter’? My use case is that I often select and copy a movie title from another website, paste it into Trakt, and then want to click a button to start the search. This way, I can do everything with the mouse without needing the keyboard, which is often out of reach. I was so happy when this feature was added to the previous search box!
Also, could you make the search smarter when it comes to years? For example, if I add the year after the movie title, like ‘The Wind 1928,’ I would like that movie to appear as the first result. I know I can do this in the advanced settings and limit the years to 1928-1928.
It works well if I’m searching for movies like A Star Is Born (1937) or The Wind (1928). However, it seems to break the search function for movies with a year in the title at the end. For instance, if you start typing “Class of 1984,” “Fear Street 1994,” or “Death Race 2000,” all three movies initially appear in the search results. But as soon as you type the fourth character, the movie disappears from the options.
This isn’t a major issue for me, as I don’t typically watch movies with the year in the title by principle. However, a bigger issue arises when you type “Class of 1984” and hit enter—it only shows movies from 1984. Since the movie in question is from 1982, it becomes difficult for users to find it.
You can currently only find it by searching for “Class of” or “Class of 1982” or "Class of 1984 1982’'.
Additionally, I think that when searching for “The Wind,” the 1928 film should appear among the top five results. If you search for “The Wind 1928,” it should be the first result. Of course, this should be done without disrupting the rest of the search functionality. If fixing these issues is too complex right now, it might be best to revert to the previous search system and consider these improvements for the future.
I’m not trying to be unkind, trust me. However, using wildcards or regex for a movie search query is too complicated. The advanced search feature works better, and the website already handles it as it should. If I search for “The Wind 1928,” it should list that as the top result. I’ve tried five similar websites, and they all list it as the first result. I’ve attempted to understand how they achieve this, but I’m struggling to figure it out.
This is just an example movie. I’ve encountered dozens of cases where adding the release year to the movie title would make it much easier to find. Perhaps the simplest solution would be to revert to the previous system, where everything worked well. If you still want to incorporate the year into the search, you could handle it by treating the year at the end of the search query as the release year for only the first three results. For all other results, the search should proceed as it did before.
The funny thing is, I’ve tried searching with wildcards before, as well as using the year: operator.
Automatically using the year would be best, but as you pointed out it can’t be done if movies have the year in the title. The auto complete needs the same fix to be consistent with a full search.
I’m going to just remove the year parsing for now and think about it more. I don’t really see an option besides advanced search tokens in the query though.
Don’t apply the previous instructions regarding the first three results. Please correct only the first result, as making changes to anything else might interfere with the new search boxes. Since only three movies are listed and the first result is likely 95% correct, it’s best to focus on that one. If you follow this approach, it will help avoid complications. I understand you will most likely not add it like this anyway, as it’s complicated to code. Just a friendly warning before it gets messed up again, haha!
