321339 - Results found with Ctrl+F (find) not visible enough, should blink

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, enhancement)

Description

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

Edit>Find highlights text in a colour that, on some web pages, is too hard to see. It would help if there were a Preferences ... blink flag, so that the found text is really really visisble. White-on-black then black-on-white, over-riding whatever colours are on the page, sort of thing. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

bug 127314 was wontfix'ed, but bug 194870 is still open

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

The fix for bug 176605 should have made it visible on all pages.  Can you give an example of a page or background color where it isn't visible?

See also bug 292191 and bug 255941.

Comment 3

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

A slowly blinking backgroundcolor would definitly draw your attention a lot better than the static one.

Comment 4

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

(In reply to comment #0)

> Edit>Find highlights text in a colour that, on some web pages, is too hard to
> see. 

Add the line

#__firefox-findbar-search-id {text-decoration:blink;}

to the file userContent.css 

in the chrome directory in your profile and see if that improves the viability a bit (You'll need to restart FF to make it work).

Comment 5

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

and if you really want it to stick out, make it

#__firefox-findbar-search-id {
	text-decoration:blink; border:1px solid #000;
	padding-left:1px !important;
	padding-right:1px !important;
	margin-left:1px;
	margin-right:1px;
}

Comment 6

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

Attachment: demonstration css comment 5

kinda worst case scenario, when the used background is yellow (Yes, there are pages in the wild that really look like that)

Comment 7

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

I added the lines to the (previously blank) userContent.css file (the only such file on my hard disk), and restarted Firefox, to what appears to be no effect. 

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

Where was the userContent.css that you edited?  Normally, you have to *create* one in the proper location, which is the chrome subdirectory of your profile directory.

Comment 9

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

It is in Firefox:Profiles:default.hqv:Chrome, and default.hqv is the only sub-directory of Profiles. 

Suggestion: somewhere in preferences there be a three-way radio button choice, between 
Find results shown: highlighted; blinking; blink and outlined

Comment 10

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

(In reply to comment #9)
> It is in Firefox:Profiles:default.hqv:Chrome, and default.hqv is the only
> sub-directory of Profiles. 

default.hqv\chrome\userContent-example.css
change the name to userContent.css and add those lines

> Suggestion: somewhere in preferences there be a three-way radio button choice,
> between 
> Find results shown: highlighted; blinking; blink and outlined

There's a penalty for even suggesting to add UI ;-)

Comment 11

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

I'll pay that penalty: beer may be collected in person. I think it would be a welcome addition. 

Meanwhile, idiot user (me) can't get this to work. I even tried adding the lines to userChrome.css, but that didn't work either. Is that a bug, or user stupidity?

Comment 12

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

It has been explained. The colouring doesn't work for the control-F control-G control-G find-one-at-a-time type of operation. But it does work splendidly for a control-F type-something control-A find-all operation. 

Thanks to Peter van der Woude for his patience and time. 

I still think it should be an option in the UI, and apply to both types of operation, but I detect non-enthusiasm among the experts. 

Comment 13

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

Be patient Julian, let the others on the CC list have a look and form their opinion.

Additions/changes to the UI allways take a lot of time (weeks/months/yes sometimes years) because no one wants to add stuff that too few people use.
Changing it in a manner that serves all is a far better solution and it often takes lots of discussion to find the acceptable balance.

Comment 14

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

Sure sure. I wasn't being disparaging or rude; merely emphasising my opinion (which is merely one opinion amongst many) that it would be a worthwhile addition to the UI. 

Comment 15

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Blinking backgrounds will get the user's attention, yes, but become unneccessarily distracting once the desired text has been attended by the user.

Jesse, in comment 2 you asked for example pages. JWZ's blog http://www.jwz.org/ (search for jamie) is a pretty good one showing where the green highlight fails. The right solution here is to ensure that the highlight colour *is* visible, but to do this in a way that doesn't complicate the UI or involve blinking.

This is WONTFIX, but I invite reporter to reopen with a changed summary (or open a new bug) that doesn't tie the solution to blinking.

Comment 16

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

For ctrl-F to be visable on almost any page you need
ui.textSelectBackgroundAttention to be a dark color i/o of a light one.
The white text is a greenish background just doesn't have the contrast it needs.

I changed the pref to
ui.textSelectBackgroundAttention #FF0000 
and haven't found a page yet where i wouldn't easily find the word.

I know red is general is for warning, but in visability it beats the greenish color with ease.

Comment 17

[Peter Lairo]

(In reply to comment #15)
> This is WONTFIX, but I invite reporter to reopen with a changed summary (or
> open a new bug) that doesn't tie the solution to blinking.

This bug is something I come across often. I think the bug reporter is AWOL. Could someone else change the summary to something more "general"? Like:

Results found with Ctrl+F (find) and Quick Find not visible enough. Need more noticable marking of found text (e.g., blink 3 times, or other color)