84708 - [RFE] Find dialog should allow emacs-style match-as-you-go

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 30088

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Big Ears]

This is a feature request that will (in my opinion) make the find tool a joy to use.

As the summary says, the Find dialog should use an emacs-style match-as-you-go
search style.  The anticipated behavior is that when you start typing in the 
find dialog, the partial string is matched with each keystroke, and the
appropriate location on the web page is highlighted and moved to.  The 'Find
again' can be enabled after the first match.

This should probably be accompanied by a checkbox in the Find dialog that
enables/disables this behavior, because although it a very subtle change, a user
who is accustomed to the canonical find dialog--typing in a string and then
presses the 'find' button--will end up finding the second instance of that
string, rather than the first. (first will be matched when the last keystroke is
complete, second will match when the find button is pressed.)

From a UI perspective, this type of searching is incredibly useful for finding a
string in a flat document.  The main thing to recognize is that in the browser,
the 'find' dialog is used to search through a single page, and thus is different
from the search engine-type or database-type query, where the current style is
more appropriate. (This may be more appropriate for the email/newsgroup find,
but I'm not too sure about that either.) If a user can find the proper word in a
few keystrokes, you should enable them to do so!  Furthermore, with the current
Find style, I can imagine many novice users treat the dialog more like a search
engine, and enter too much information and receive null results, even when
appropriate results actually exist.

Comment 1

[Matthew Cline]

Confirming this enhancement bug, as I think many people would find it
useful; slightly modifiying the summary ("[RFE]" rather than "Feature Request")

Also, a prefernce to say "always do Find this way" would be good.

Comment 2

[timeless]

mpt/german: do you have a current spec that's able to grow to accomodate 
requests like this?  and is there an RFE for highlight search? (and is anyone 
working w/ google on a port of their ie search tooblar)

Comment 3

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

I agree entirely with the original report, except for this bit:
>
> This should probably be accompanied by a checkbox in the Find dialog that
> enables/disables this behavior

Since there wouldn't *be* a Find dialog, this wouldn't be possible.

Comment 4

[Johan Walles]

This is a duplicate of bug 30088, but I don't have the permissions to mark it as
such.

Comment 5

[timeless]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 30088 ***