Re: [Usability] Activating find with /

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 16:50 -0600, Shaun McCance wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 17:43 -0500, Eric Larson wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 15:47 -0600, Shaun McCance wrote:
> > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321145
> > > 
> > > There's this sort of old Unixy tradition of making text
> > > viewers bring up the find dialog or toolbar when you hit
> > > the / key, just as if you had hit Ctrl+F.
> > > 
> > > Epiphany 1.8.2 has the following behavior:
> > > * Typing anything but slash or space starts type-ahead
> > >   find on link text only.  Once you're in this mode,
> > >   slashes and spaces just append to your search string.
> > > * Typing a slash starts type-ahead find on all the text
> > >   in the page.  It doesn't bring up a find toolbar or
> > >   anything.  It just shows what you're searching for in
> > >   the status bar.
> > > * Typing space scrolls.
> > > * Typing Ctrl+F brings up the find toolbar, which does
> > >   not do type-ahead find.
> > > 
> > > Yelp has the following behavior right now:
> > > * Typing anything but a space starts type-ahead find
> > >   on link text only.  Once you're in this mode, spaces
> > >   just append to your search string.
> > > * Typing space scrolls.
> > > * Typing Ctrl+F brings up the find toolbar, which *does*
> > >   do type-ahead find.
> > > 
> > > I don't like that slash and Ctrl+F are different kids of
> > > search in Epiphany.  I do, however, find link text search
> > > very useful from time to time.
> > > 
> > > Having slash bring up the find toolbar in Yelp would
> > > conflict with type-ahead on links whenever there's some
> > > link text with slashes in it.  But then, maybe I'm just
> > > making too much out of an odd corner case.
> > > 
> > > The whole slash thing probably doesn't matter to many
> > > "average" users (read: not *nix geeks).  But those
> > > pesky vi users just love it.
> > > 
> > > Thoughts?
> > 
> > 
> > I am not sure how applicable this is, but I remember at one point in
> > firefox typing a slash "/" in a form would start a text search. This was
> > very frustrating when blogging or filling in any in depth form fields. I
> > say this because I think leaving Ctrl-F as the find shortcut is plenty
> > in the vast majority of situation. It also provides some level of
> > consistency across platforms, which I think is a "good thing". After
> > all, someone may "try" Ctrl-F to find something when they will probably
> > not use "/" to find something purposely. 
> > 
> > Just my two cents. 
> 
> Not disagreeing with you at all, but I just want to make it clear
> that Ctrl+F will absolutely remain a shortcut for find, regardless
> of whether / is also made a shortcut.  Anybody who actually suggests
> removing Ctrl+F will quickly see the blunt end of my clue bat. ;)

Yes, I was only suggesting getting rid of the "/" as a shortcut as well.

Eric