Create a unified browse and search interface as GSoC project draft proposal

Here is my idea on combining the browse and search pages in MusicBrainz.

Even though MusicBrainz at present has a fantastic collection of
information what I felt is that for somebody just coming and visiting the
site for the first time, the vastness or the unbelivable collection of
music information it has is not that clearly visible. And most of all, for
somebody to get the best use out of this database, they need to have some
familiarity with the querying syntax which none of the people visiting the
site for the first time would have.

So I firmly believe adding a link saying 'Explore' at the header of the
page would bring about a big change on the way the users would access the
information.

Clicking on the Explore link would lead the user to a page like shown in
this link.
http://s12.postimg.org/i68jeel7x/mock.png

(Please note that this mockup was made to provide some better understanding
on the functionality and is a draft one)

This 'Explore' page should provide a GUI that allows the user to do
(almost) each and every possibile action they could have done by writing a
query. Yet this page needs to be very user friendly with minimum scroll and
should look simple to the user too since a lot of options need to be
provided on the single page.

Another target of this page would be to avoid forcing the user to choose a
single category when doing the search. What I feel is that forcing the user
to choose one category would limit the browsing experience of the user. So
instead user can select multiple categories he wish at the same time and
get the respective results as tabs on the right side pane. It is also
possible to build one table by merging the tables on all the tabs and
increase the table's fields as the user chooses more categories. Please let
me know if you have any idea on which way is better.

Turning towards the functionality of the search/browsing, rather than
showing all the options available at once, it would be more easy for the
user if we can use a hierarchical structure that would reveal filters step
by step and guide the user to the specific result filter he wants. For
example as shown in the linked mockup at the top most level we can show the
basic categories as Artist, Release Groups, Releases etc. Once Artist is
clicked, the sub options will roll down. In the mockup, the user has chosen
an Artist search as well as a Release search. To narrow down the Artist
search, user has selected options with Gender being male, Type being Group
OR Other and Tags being Jazz OR Blues OR HipHop. To narrow down the Release
Groups search, user has chosen the Primary Type to be Single OR Ep.

And the important fact here is that if the user has provided some search
term in the search field, it would be a search as "show me artists and
Release groups with "enteredSearchTerm" with artist Gender being male, Type
being Group OR Other and Tags being Jazz OR Blues OR HipHop and with
release groups being Primary Type to be Single OR Ep".
And of the user has not provided any input, the search will be as if he
wrote * there. That is "show me all artists and Release groups with artist
Gender being male, Type being Group OR Other and Tags being Jazz OR Blues
OR HipHop and with release groups being Primary Type to be Single OR Ep"

The above mechanism will make not only make the page look simple but also
give the user more flexibility in searching or browsing through the
database.

Please let me know your ideas on this.

Thanks

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