Search / Retrieve document box usability ideas

[Skags]

The site I'm redesigning / reworking has a lot of documents, a TON of documents. I need to develop an 'elegant' solution that allows users of the site to search certain document types with keywords or phrases, or retrieve a specific document that they know the number of. My boss wants it to be as compact as possible so it can fit nicely at the top of our left navigation at all times.

Here is the basic solution I came up with, but I'm not sure of its elegance:
http://isaacch.googlepages.com/test.html

I'm putting it up here for any thoughts on how it works. Is it confusing? Is it too compact? Is it trying to accomplish too much in too small of a space? Etc. (haha you can probably extrapolate my main concerns)

Any thoughts / ideas are greatly appreciated.

P.S. I'm not able to do anything about the disagreeable colors / fonts

[Skags]

I should clarify some of my constraints. The side nav width I have to work with is merely 150px wide. And document numbers can be up to 11 characters long.
Ex: 115a.112.2

[Boogle]

I noticed you've used php so I don't know how it works for client side validation maybe you just have to use javascript but anyway, you ned some validation on there so incase someone enters 12 characters long it is caught before a postback is laucnhed thus causing unecessary traffic.

What's going to happen if the search finds nothing and what's going to happen if the search finds something? What controls are you going to use to display the results of the search?

You see this is sooo easy with ASP.NET... php i don't know i don't use it but i think they are the things to consider.

HTH's a bit... ?

Boog's

[Skags]

The back end of this is no problem, the processing involved won't be anything too difficult. What I'm mainly concerned with is finding a good way for users to interact with this data easily. From any point on our site I would like a user to be able to search a statute for key words or a phrase, or retrieve a specific statute if they know the number (ex: 1.01)

The example that I posted doesn't seem to be clear that it provides that functionality.