Search for selected text

[Gabriel Charette]

Hey guys,

I'm annoyed everytime I search for text in chrome, because my reflex is to select text and then ctrl-F (at which point I expect to search for the selected text, but in Chrome the search box is empty...)

I know you can: select, ctrl-c, ctrl-f, ctrl-v... but this is not a user-friendly workflow (and personally I always forget to ctrl-c before ctrl-f...and then have to go back to the mouse to change focus and copy/paste...

I was going to log a bug, but I'm sure I'm not the first one to notice this so I was wondering if anyone has looked into this (I looked for a bug quickly, but couldn't find one)?

Cheers,

Gab

[Pavel Ivanov]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Gabriel Charette <g...@chromium.org> wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> I'm annoyed everytime I search for text in chrome, because my reflex is to
> select text and then ctrl-F (at which point I expect to search for the
> selected text, but in Chrome the search box is empty...)

I believe this is strictly Firfox-specific behavior. Sure some habits
should change when you switch browsers.
I personally never thought that selected text should ever make it into
search box and will be surprised when I see that.

> I know you can: select, ctrl-c, ctrl-f, ctrl-v... but this is not a
> user-friendly workflow (and personally I always forget to ctrl-c before
> ctrl-f...and then have to go back to the mouse to change focus and
> copy/paste...

You don't need mouse for that. Just press esc when you see empty
search box, then immediately press ctrl-c, ctrl-f, ctrl-v, enter.

Pavel

[Gabriel Charette]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Pavel Ivanov <paiv...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Gabriel Charette <g...@chromium.org> wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> I'm annoyed everytime I search for text in chrome, because my reflex is to
> select text and then ctrl-F (at which point I expect to search for the
> selected text, but in Chrome the search box is empty...)

I believe this is strictly Firfox-specific behavior. Sure some habits
should change when you switch browsers.
I personally never thought that selected text should ever make it into
search box and will be surprised when I see that.

It's a very common behavior in many programs I feel (not only browsers, but many text editors and IDEs for sure).

I have been using Chrome since v1 so it's not just a recent switch issue.

 

> I know you can: select, ctrl-c, ctrl-f, ctrl-v... but this is not a
> user-friendly workflow (and personally I always forget to ctrl-c before
> ctrl-f...and then have to go back to the mouse to change focus and
> copy/paste...

You don't need mouse for that. Just press esc when you see empty
search box, then immediately press ctrl-c, ctrl-f, ctrl-v, enter.

Thanks for the tip, but it's still not user-friendly imo.

 

Cheers,

Gab

Pavel

[Tibor]

It's definitely not FF specific, every decent software uses selected
text when Ctrl+F (or F3) is used.
Developers should know this, I suspect all IDE work like this. In good
ones text doesn't even has to be selected, the word where the cursor
is is used if there's no selection.

Even if there were no software with this behavior Chrome could have
it, it's good for usablity.

[Stephen]

+1 Think it's probably expected behaviour, know for me it is.

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[Evans Turner (Work)]

It probably was not long ago when Firefox started doing this. I've
noticed this behavior with text editors and IDEs, but I used Firefox
for many years and never noticed it (fully transitioned to Chrome
about a year ago). I never expected this behavior in a web browser. In
fact, it might even annoy me because I constantly highlight lines so I
can find the last place I was reading after I get interrupted or
distracted.

-Evans

> > Chromium Discussion mailing list: chromium-disc...@chromium.org

[Gabriel Charette]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 8:47 AM, Evans Turner (Work) <jevanstu...@gmail.com> wrote:

It probably was not long ago when Firefox started doing this. I've
noticed this behavior with text editors and IDEs, but I used Firefox
for many years and never noticed it (fully transitioned to Chrome
about a year ago). I never expected this behavior in a web browser. In
fact, it might even annoy me because I constantly highlight lines so I
can find the last place I was reading after I get interrupted or
distracted.

Actually this argument is somewhat irrelevant as when you start a search anything that was selected is immediately deselected...

If your argument is more along the lines that you don't want what you selected to be auto-filled in the search, that's also not an issue as it would be prefilled and highlighted in the search box s.t. if you start typing something else it is immediately replaced.

Cheers,

Gab

 

Chromium Discussion mailing list: chromium...@chromium.org

[Evans Turner (Work)]

Consider this scenario: I'm browsing on a message board, practicing my
usual habit of highlighting blocks of text as I scroll to help me find
my reading position if something interrupts me or distracts me. I spot
a post that quotes part of a previous post, and I want to read or
quote the original post myself, but it is assumed to be higher-up on
the page. I happened to leave a common word or word combination
highlighted, and it's not related to my search. Being a keyboard
person, I don't bother to select the search text with my mouse...I
just press Ctrl+F and try to type the statement that I see in the
quoted text...however, before I can type it the browser jumps up to
the top of the page and highlights the first instance of the unrelated
text I had selected. I can no longer see the words that I wanted to
type.

It would be very irritating if the page jumped back to the top before
I had typed anything. This would be fine if it searches for the
selected text without jumping to the first instance...so the page
doesn't move until I type something or press the Enter/Return key. I
would be fine with that.

-Evans

On Apr 26, 12:59 pm, Gabriel Charette <g...@chromium.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 8:47 AM, Evans Turner (Work) <
>

> jevansturnerw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It probably was not long ago when Firefox started doing this. I've
> > noticed this behavior with text editors and IDEs, but I used Firefox
> > for many years and never noticed it (fully transitioned to Chrome
> > about a year ago). I never expected this behavior in a web browser. In
> > fact, it might even annoy me because I constantly highlight lines so I
> > can find the last place I was reading after I get interrupted or
> > distracted.
>
> Actually this argument is somewhat irrelevant as when you start a search

> anything that *was* selected is immediately deselected...

[Gabriel Charette]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Evans Turner (Work) <jevanstu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Consider this scenario: I'm browsing on a message board, practicing my
usual habit of highlighting blocks of text as I scroll to help me find
my reading position if something interrupts me or distracts me. I spot
a post that quotes part of a previous post, and I want to read or
quote the original post myself, but it is assumed to be higher-up on
the page. I happened to leave a common word or word combination
highlighted, and it's not related to my search. Being a keyboard
person, I don't bother to select the search text with my mouse...I
just press Ctrl+F and try to type the statement that I see in the
quoted text...however, before I can type it the browser jumps up to
the top of the page and highlights the first instance of the unrelated
text I had selected. I can no longer see the words that I wanted to
type.

It would be very irritating if the page jumped back to the top before
I had typed anything. This would be fine if it searches for the
selected text without jumping to the first instance...so the page
doesn't move until I type something or press the Enter/Return key. I
would be fine with that.

I definitely agree that if we implement auto-fill of the selected text for search it makes sense to wait for the user to press Enter as it would be annoying if it were to immediately jump to the first matching section of the text on the page.

I suggest:

ctrl->F: open search box and wait for user action to start searching (i.e. start typing or press Enter to search for "what is currently there")

where "what is currently there" would be, in order of priority:

1) Your currently selected text

2) Your previous search if no text is currently selected on the page

3) Empty otherwise (I don't see a good way to guess your search if you haven't selected anything, nor previously searched for anything on the page...)

In any case, when the search box is prefilled, the prefilled text is highlighted s.t. anything you start typing overrides it.

Cheers,

Gab

 

Chromium Discussion mailing list: chromium...@chromium.org

[Finnur Thorarinsson]

As the person who originally implemented Find in Page in Chrome I was open to the idea of trying this out, despite not liking how often my search values would get clobbered in i.e. Visual Studio's Find dialog. We even had a changelist in flight that implemented it. But upon review people didn't like the idea, so it got shot down before it made it through the review process (by some of the heavyweights on the project, if I recall). 

This thread is mostly a rehash of the discussions that have already surfaced about this feature up till now and I don't see anything new that would warrant revisiting that discussion (I believe all of these viewpoints were known when the decision was made not to implement this). None of the other major browser vendors have seen a reason to follow Firefox on this either.

[Gabriel Charette]

Interesting, thanks for stepping in Finnur.

I'd be curious to see those discussions if you have them handy.

I don't really see a downside to it the way I specified it in my last reply (other than that it clobbers your previous search, but I feel like more than 50% of the time you mean to search for the selected text when there is some selected text which means that overall you save typing time).

Cheers,

Gab

[PhistucK]

A comfortable compromise would be - if the search box already had a value (you already looked for something before), do not clobber it, but if there is no value - replace it with the selected text.

Then the advanced user would simply have to delete the text from the search box once they are done with it.

I realize that this is an 'oh well' compromise, but I feel that it targets all of the purposes and issues. It simply adds, it does not manipulate.

☆PhistucK

[Gabriel Charette]

What about always prefilling the selected text (if there is some), but adding a dropdown menu to the search box to be able to select previous 

searches.

That also addresses the only down-side (which is that you lose your search if you somehow selected text, but meant to search for your previous search).

Cheers,

Gab

[Pavel Ivanov]

> That also addresses the only down-side (which is that you lose your search
> if you somehow selected text, but meant to search for your previous search).

Note, that this is "the only downside" for you. I search for selected
text maybe in 10% of cases or less. But I very often highlight text
just in reaction to my thoughts or to stress something for the
colleague watching at the same screen. When I want to search something
after this it's never related to the highlighted text. I will hate to
see that highlighted text made it to the search box and replaced the
old search value I had there. And dropdown won't save the situation
because I won't try to use mouse to select something - re-type it will
be faster. Sure you can choose value in dropdown by pressing down or
up arrows but after accidentally touching those buttons I will panic
that the value I just typed disappeared somewhere. Dropdown also
raises the question of what to do with it when I already typed new
value and pressed Enter. Should dropdown disappear? If not then again
accidental touch of arrow buttons suddenly change the search term
causing pretty bad user experience. If dropdown should disappear then
it will cause flickering which again results in bad UI experience.


Pavel

[Finnur Thorarinsson]

> I'd be curious to see those discussions if you have them handy. 

No, they are on Rietveld somewhere.

Any changes we make to the Find UI need to be first reviewed by the UI leads. Since they have already said no to this I'm not going to spend any cycles thinking about this issue until there's an indication that that might change.

[Gabriel Charette]

I just add an even better idea :)!

What about we leave the current behavior as is for ctrl-f, but add ctrl-shift-f to do the behavior I described :)?!

Cheers,

Gab

[Finnur Thorarinsson]

The general Chrome UI design philosophy is to try to design features with the _vast_ majority of users in mind and shy away from these hidden switches/modifiers that appeal to the fringe/power users. A Shift modifier would fall squarely in the latter category.

[habibalex]

I agree with the original poster.  Highlight, pressing ctrl-c, ctrl-f, ctrl-v is very annoying, there should be an option somewhere to allow chrome users who wants this feature to enable it.  I'm fine with it not being enabled by default, but it seems easy enough to implement in the settings.

[Jiří Prokop]

I agree too with the original post. I understand that if you are using mainly the browser you can appreciate this behavior, but what about you are using Chrome/Chromium for web-development and you very often switch between browser and IDE. Then you are either combining it together according to context or you have to use inefficient way with Ctrl+C; Ctrl+V. Both is "painful". I vote for some settings for it or possibility to extend search field (similar to the new-tab extensions).

Dne pondělí, 23. dubna 2012 19:52:29 UTC+2 Gabriel Charette napsal(a):

[Simon Morris]

As Finnur says, this was discussed at crbug.com/876, and the reasons for not implementing the feature are given there.

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[Brent P]

Sorry naysayers, but Firefox does it right. Nothing anyone has said to try to show a downside to using selected text in the search box is valid with the way Firefox does it.

This, and the missing keyboard shortcut for the bookmarks menu (really? was it a requirement to have never used a browser in order to work on chrome?) are making the transition from Firefox to Chrome pretty painful.