1106407 - Needs to be an option for find toolbar to stay open and keep its search string from tab to tab

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, enhancement)

Description

[Jason Quinn]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0 Iceweasel/31.2.0
Build ID: 20141102030225

Steps to reproduce:

Trying to find same search string across numerous recently-opened tabs (many thousands).


Actual results:

I have to use cntr-f on each tab and enter my search string over and over again.


Expected results:

The new default behavior where each tab has its own separate search bar is a good thing most of the time. BUT it would be nice if there was a way to "lock" the taskbar such that it behaves in the old way where it was universal and not tied to each tab independently. Web searches find that other people are still interested in the old behavior so this may not be as niche as it might seem at first.

Maybe there could exist a "persist" checkbox in the findbar that causes my desired behavior.

Comment 1

[Stan]

I also have had this problem and find the new behaviour extremely annoying since it changed from the original behaviour, somewhere around Firefox 15.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 3

[littlergirl]

User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/118.0

There should be a way to change the search from per-tab to per-window so that the "Find In Page" GUI interface can remain on-screen until you manually close it so that you don't have to use the keyboard (pressing Ctrl+f ) to bring it back every time you change tabs, but can continue a search across various tabs with the mouse from the "Find In Page" GUI interface.

I realize that you can press F3 to perform an existing search in a new tab without the "Find In Page" GUI interface being opened. I also realize that you can press / to open the "Find In Page" GUI interface for a new search in a new tab. Both of those require keyboard interaction, however. What was taken away from us and what we would like back is mouse interaction with the GUI interface across tabs.

This requested feature was default behavior in Firefox for many years, but the Mozilla team took it away. It would be nice if they would give us an option to toggle per-tab/per-window behavior for controlling the permanence of the presence of the "Find In Page" GUI interface if we like. I'm sure none of us who would like this feature back would mind if it was tucked away inside of about:config so that the folks who aren't interested in such things wouldn't even have to see or realize that it exists.

Please bring this feature back. It would be much appreciated.