Re: [Usability] Standardizing Find and Replace windows

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 01Jul2003 11:11PM (-0400), Liam R. E. Quin wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-06-30 at 21:10, Gregory Merchan wrote:
> > Here's a fairly slipshod attempt to make "Find" and "Find and Replace"
> > windows that are suitable for all apps.
> 
> For my part I'd rather put a text field in the status bar of a window,
> with a "find" button, or a pulldown choice,
>   find forwards
>   find backwards
>   open find/replace window
> 
> I don't like "find" bringing up a dialogue box that obscures the text I
> was looking at.  This is only good user interface design in the "good
> means copying the mistakes of others" school of thought.  Another
> example of irritating insanity in this vein is the gimp's "crop"
> dialogue, which hides part of the window, coming up exactly over
> the place you're working and is always disruptive.  Wait until I've
> dragged the whole rectangle, guys, how hard can this be?
> 
> So let's get rid of find dialogues altogether and improve the world.

A lot of Mac OS X programs have an interface like this for plain
searching or filtering. They even do incremental search when
appropriate. It works pretty well. There is usually a backup
find/replace dialog for more complicated cases.

Regards,
Maciej