279087 - Find Toolbar: "Find Again" does not persist across Windows

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect, P3)

Description

[D.Tietze]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When searching (CTRL-F) in one window, then opening a link in a new window (NOT
tab!), "find again" does not find the search term. Instead, I have to enter the
search term again.

I use multi-window browsing a lot, not tabbed browsing. I also often browse for
programming solutions, etc., so I'll be looking for the same thing over and over
again. Having individual search terms for each Window (or set of tabs) is not
really very helpful. It means I have to enter the same (sometimes complex)
search term over and over again.

NOTE: This is NOT a duplicate of bug 250429! Bug 250429 is marked as "fixed" and
"verified" but unfortunately the fix chose to ignore the "and windows" part of
the original reporter's bug summary. This is also not a FAYT issue; it refers
ONLY to the "find" feature.

The behaviour is also pretty annoying since closing a window loses the search
term entered in that window - you have to enter it again in a new window.

Please also see the (currently) last messages in this thread in Mozillazine 
for a longer discussion: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=96481

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to Google. Look for something.
2. Open links in multiple windows
3. Go to one of the windows, press "CTRL-F", enter seach term
4. Go to other window. Press F3 or CTRL-G

Actual Results:  
Second window does not know search term from first search.

Expected Results:  
Search in second window for search terms from first search.

i.e. ONE global "last search" per user, not one per set of tabs. It's ME
interacting with the application. I expect the application's "model" of me to
know ONE "last search term" - that's the last thing I was looking for. Not what
the application (or its developer) chooses to store in per-window instance
variables. And I expect to be able to find and find again within the same
application, regardless of my navigation behaviour.

In order to perhaps please most folks most of the time, maybe a configuration
variable to put it back to the way it was before would be sufficient?

Comment 1

[Gordon Schumacher]

I'll add to this that it also appears to not work if you change the contents of
the window - that is:

1. Go to a website that presents as several pages (i.e., a list of a band's CDs
on Amazon).  Hit <CTRL-F> (or just start typing, if you have that option
enabled) and search for something.  It's not found.
2. Click on the "More results" or "Next Page" or whatever button.
3. Hit <CTRL-G> to see if it's on *this* page.  Lather, rinse, repeat... but it
will never find the search term with <CTRL-G> with this method.