Use your Green machine here, so bring it on! Look forward to update as I have already teased our community :-)

It will be part of the GbG, as there are too many dependencies in terms of anchoring and logic that a component could only fulfill with great effort. Programmatically fading out the original layout first and replacing it with a different one wouldn't make things any faster, by the way. ;)

~Z~ Man, would this be an update to Green, or a new single component? Thanks again for all.

Spot on, that works! Release that puppy :-) You have made a weak point a strength in OSSN...you're hired! Excellent work ~Z~ Man and appreciate the attention to detail.

Okay, I managed to place that additional icon on the top bar. It's tested to work with older devices down to 320px of width. Result types appear in line. Depending on the string length 3 to 4 entries should be possible per line - further ones will float to the next line.

Agree with your Drawback, although we have 7 to choose from, you're showing 2 on phone. Screen real estate since almost all use phone is critical, and based on Green theme, you get it.

You have an eloquent solution that should be THE OSSN search. A suggestion, if possible, put search icon on TopBar, there's room and it's one click from anywhere. Did notice TopBar only had Menu while searching, a restriction in OSSN?

You do really good work, excited about potential, and thank you.

Possible, yes. Drawback: It would need an extra click to open that popup. Perhaps a simple inline layout would do ...

~Z~ Man, very close indeed, excellent. Does RESULT TYPE have to be that option box format or can it be a simple drop down list to save space?

Thank you very much for your suggestions, GreenTavern.
In fact, your idea can't be implemented 1:1 without touching the core search function, so I was trying a little different approach which comes close to yours.

1. Since entering a search term in the main menu and getting the results on a different page is cumbersome on mobile devices anyway, I have replaced the field in the menu with a simple link leading to the result page which is initially empty.
   
   So there's no more unecessary user table query in case you were intentionally searching for something different.
2. Next, in order to make the new mechanism a little more transparent, there's a info icon that opens a tooltip...
   
3. As before, you may leave the field blank and get all results, or you enter a search term first and then click on people or groups and get the matching records
   

4. In opposite to the former logic, now your search term stays in place. So you may either enter some more characters and/or use the same query for groups or other result types
   

5. All in all you don't have to switch between menu and result page anymore - you'll stay on the same page all the time.

~Z~ Man, you are definitely the go to here :-) Let me ask if this is even possible.

Main search: A simple combo box ie, a text box with an attached list box. Excellent for history (set a limit to display) of your search. The default is always real name or username, however you got it setup in OSSN. If you leave text box blank and search it takes you to result page but doesn't search for anything.

Search result page;
Should have a drop-down list box, it's static data, contains all that can be searched (Username, Real Name, Groups, Blogs, Online etc). Below that is the same simple combo box noted above. This gives you one stop shopping for searching OSSN, very flexible, smaller foot print and ability to stay in one place until desired result.