New Docs: Improved search

[mrdoob]

Related issue: #30748

Description

The new search UX seem like quite a regression to me.
Tried to recreate it with the new documentation system.

Before (Desktop)

Screen.Recording.2025-10-03.at.16.01.10.mov

Before (Mobile)

Screen.Recording.2025-10-03.at.16.02.08.mov

After (Desktop)

Screen.Recording.2025-10-03.at.16.09.15.mov

After (Mobile)

Screen.Recording.2025-10-03.at.16.07.22.mov

[mrdoob]

I'm not very happy with the front-end architecture of the new docs...

Before we would have a link like this:

https://threejs.org/docs/#examples/en/exporters/USDZExporter

The new links would be like this:

https://threejs.org/docs/USDZExporter.html

This means that the navigation needs to be reloaded every click. As well as the search results state.

Another issue is that, if we were to rename USDZExporter then USDZExporter.html will produce a 404.
The current system does not produce a 404, and allows us to show a clarifying message to the user if needed.

I'm thinking of changing the template so it produces the old template files like these:

https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/dev/docs/examples/en/exporters/USDZExporter.html

That way we can reuse the previous documentation system, which hasn't created any issues.

However, we could also use this update to flatten the URLs...

https://threejs.org/docs/#USDZExporter or...
https://threejs.org/docs/#addons/USDZExporter

[Mugen87]

With this PR, it won't be possible to search for methods and properties inside modules anymore, which has been requested in the past, see #29741 or #19342. The search isn't actually a search with these changes but just a filter over the navigation which makes the whole search obsolete. To me, this feels like a downgrade, tbh.

Why not having both like discussed in #31524? A navigation filter and a real search that for example shows the result in an overlay or dropdown. This is how the docs of Unreal work: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/unreal-engine-5-6-documentation

[mrdoob]

Yeah. I'll try to implement this on Monday.

[mrdoob]

#32036 (comment)