Re: Usability: search dialog missing

[Jost Boekemeier <jostb2345 yahoo de>]

Hi Reinout,


I think "incremental search" is an important feature,
but I don't think it can be a replacement for a
"normal" search dialog. Consider the following
szenario:

You want to search for keywords, mark important
passages and copy them into an editor.
You usually place the editor to the left side of the
screen, the browser in the middle and the search
dialog somewhere on the right, so that it can be
reached easily. 

In this szenario the current implementation is
useless; you must move the mouse to the top of the
screen, click on search, move the mouse all the way to
the bottom of the screen, enter the search text there,
copy the passage, move the mouse all the way to the
top of the screen, click on search/repeat search, move
the mouse all the way to the bottom of the screen and
enter the new search text there, and so on.

Compared with a search dialog, which can be placed so
that only horizontal mouse movement is necessary, the
above szenario requires an enormous amount of
additional work. 


> When I use the Find 
> bar I am perfectly able to view the text surrounding
> a highlighted match.

Not necessarily, if the match is the last word on the
current page for example.


> You're right, it's the first time I notice this. I
> doubt that it can be 
> fixed because the scroll bar is rendered by Mozilla
> instead of GTK 

I don't quite understand. Firefox also places an entry
field at the bottom of the page for incremental
search. But it doesn't have the problems that the
epiphany implementation has. What about using the
firefox implementation instead?


> The Find bar was introduced as an extension for
> Epiphany 1.6 (GNOME 
> 2.10) and was well received so it became part of the
> core. 

Interesting. I've used epiphany in the past because I
disliked firefox search behaviour. Placing a fixed
search entry field at the bottom of the page is
especially unfortunate because horizontal mouse
movement is usually easier than vertical movement. The
epiphany implementation is even worse because it
forces you to travel from the menu bar at the top to
the entry field at the bottom for each repeated
search.


Regards,
Jost Boekemeier



	

	
		
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