347800 - "Find as you type" doesnt stop looking after first failure

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 293889

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect)

Description

[vstarre]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060406 Firefox/1.5.0.4 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.4-1)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060406 Firefox/1.5.0.4 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.4-1)

When using "Find as you type", the entire system slows to a crawl as it does not stop searching after failure to find a substring.
That is, I type:
abra

At which point "Find as you type" starts to beep, telling me that "abra" has not been found. However, I've already typed "abrah", which makes "Find as you type" start looking for "abrah", slowing down the reaction time before I actually hear the beep, so by the time I hear two beeps I've already input "abraham lincoln", and need to wait for the slow proccess of "can't find it. Beep. Search again. Can't fnd it. Beep. Search again." etc etc etc

How about adding a couple lines of logic which say: "If I didnt find 'abra' before, I shouldnt bother looking for 'abrah', 'abraha', 'abraham'", etc. Have the flag stay set until the not found string is not a part of the search string, or the text of the page has changed (due to script activity or download).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type a search wrong
2. Keep typing for a while after the beeps start
3. Make coffee, watch a movie, your computer wont respond for a while

Actual Results:  
Keeps looking for larger and larger strings until the entire browser locks up for a few seconds

Expected Results:  
Stop looking for larger strings after you've failed to find a smaller string

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

If I'm typing a search while a page is loading (or changing?), I do want it to keep searching despite a prefix not matching.

Comment 2

[vstarre]

(In reply to comment #1)
> If I'm typing a search while a page is loading (or changing?), I do want it to
> keep searching despite a prefix not matching.
> 

agreed, but I have often seen this occur when there are no signs that the page is changing.

Comment 3

[n/a]

What about maiking this a configurable option?