Browsing Multiple Result Sets at Once
Traditional search engines are designed for casual search, but search is not always casual. Microsoft has reported that "more than 50% of time spent on searching is spent in sessions over half an hour long". And anecdotal evidence suggests that people can spend hours on a search problem when finding an answer is essential to them.

The traditional search interface is geared towards depth-first search. In a depth-first search, the user digs into the result set of a query, looking at the first page of results, then the second page, then the third page, and so on. He then gives up on that query and digs into a second query, then a third query, and so on, without ever coming back to the first query. In a breadth-first search, on the other hand, the user looks at page 1 of query 1, page 1 of query 2, …, page 1 of query N, page 2 of query 1, page 2 of query 2, …, page 2 of query N, and so on. Breadth-first is a more effective strategy than depth-first search, but it is hard to carry out in a traditional search engine.

Noflail Search supports breadth-first search of result sets by letting you interleave the browsing of multiple result sets. You can collect the queries you want to use in the search history section of the left panel. (Remember to uncheck each query before issuing the next one.) You can then switch with a single click from the result set of one query to the result set of another. For result sets displayed in the Results panel, Noflail Search keeps track of the last page visited, and even of the scrolling position within the page. For result sets displayed in a pop-up window, you can preserve the position in the result set by minimizing the window: it will be restored when you click on the corresponding search history entry. When you go back to a previously visited result set you can thus resume your inspection of the results where you left off.

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