UserGuide:Autocompletion

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Wormbase Suggest (AKA autocompletion)

As you type text into the query field on the wormbase home page, Wormbase Suggest does a fast, context-sensitive, asynchronous search on a simplified database to identify optimal search queries that are guaranteed to produce a result via a more efficient wormbase search.

Some advantages of the autocompletion approach are:

  1. Less typing is required for common searches and
  2. Optimized query terms reduce load and improve the performance of the wormbase server

Changes to Wormbase Suggest

Thanks to feedback from the wormbase community, we have been able to revise and improve the behavior of this feature.


The following attributes have been improved or implemented to make wormbase autocompletion less obtrusive and more user-friendly.

  • Autocompletion can be disabled by un-checking the "wormbase suggest" check box. This choice will be remembered between browser sessions
  • Selection of a suggested query is no longer forced.
    • The user can ignore autocompletion by simply typing their entry and hitting enter or clicking the submit button.
    • Hitting the escape key makes the suggestion box go away
    • The user can scroll down the list of suggestions with the arrow keys or the mouse, then make a selection using a mouse-click, tab key or enter key.
  • The bright yellow auto-highlight has been removed.
  • The number of suggested terms are limited to 15.
  • If there is a "more..." suggestion, choosing that will search for everything that begins wit the text you have entered.
  • It is no longer necessary to hit "enter" twice!
  • The suggestions made by autocomplete are now appropriate to the selection made in the search-class popup menu.

Browser Autocompletion versus Wormbase Autocompletion

  • In cases where wormbase autocompletion is turned off, the browser autocomplete is enabled.
  • This may be confusing if they are used interchangeably, because a list of previous search terms presented by the browser autocomplete may resemble the terms suggested by wormbase.
  • Browser autocomplete uses a plain white box. In order to reduce possible confusion, wormbase autocomplete uses yellow header above the suggested queries