Visually oriented, easily navigable search facility

A technique, system, and computer program for providing a visually oriented, easily navigable search facility. Templates containing field names and possible default values are stored for each available task for this user, preferably in a memory cache or disk cache. When the user enters a value or pattern into a field of the search criteria, this value or pattern is retained. When a subsequent search is requested, the retained values are checked to determine if the user already entered values for any fields of the now-current template. If so, then those values are automatically filled in for this current template. The user is allowed to override any of the filled-in values, and these overrides will also become retained values. Retained values are cleared when the user exits the search facility, or when the user explicitly requests to clear the values.