A submission requires a title and URL. It would be nice if we could paste in the URL and see a green checkmark if the URL is not an invalid dupe or a red x if the URL is an invalid dupe. Then we don't have to copy and paste (and sometimes reformat) the title if the submission is an invalid dupe.
While I can't speak for the OP, I had been on the site for well over a year before I realized that you could search through past HN submissions at all (even though the search box is at the bottom of basically every page).
As far as I can tell, neither /submit nor the guidelines mention that you should do a search first before submitting.
Then, once you assume you should do a search before you submit, the idea is that such a search could happen on the same page as submit, as soon as you finish pasting a URL, and before you hit submit.
It's like when you go to a support site and type in a question, and it tries to give you answers by searching for other instances of that question (or by searching a knowledge base), before letting you make a new support ticket.
Ok, I get it now. HN is extremely light on the Ajax, so it would be a major design change at that level. If we decide to take that step, implementing this feature would be reasonable. But we probably wouldn't do it for one feature.
A submission requires a title and URL. It would be nice if we could paste in the URL and see a green checkmark if the URL is not an invalid dupe or a red x if the URL is an invalid dupe. Then we don't have to copy and paste (and sometimes reformat) the title if the submission is an invalid dupe.
While I can't speak for the OP, I had been on the site for well over a year before I realized that you could search through past HN submissions at all (even though the search box is at the bottom of basically every page).
As far as I can tell, neither /submit nor the guidelines mention that you should do a search first before submitting.
Then, once you assume you should do a search before you submit, the idea is that such a search could happen on the same page as submit, as soon as you finish pasting a URL, and before you hit submit.
It's like when you go to a support site and type in a question, and it tries to give you answers by searching for other instances of that question (or by searching a knowledge base), before letting you make a new support ticket.
I was referring to the new "past" functionality running automatically on the submit form, on focus change for example.
Ok, I get it now. HN is extremely light on the Ajax, so it would be a major design change at that level. If we decide to take that step, implementing this feature would be reasonable. But we probably wouldn't do it for one feature.