[Feature Request]Search Dialog Back

[yumeyao]

I dislike the 'search panel' and I want the 'search dialog' back.
Please.

I never think search panel is good for a text-editor, because when you edit a file, you eyes always concentrate on the center of the screen. Whenever there is a search panel, you have to move you eyes to the top/bottom/edge of the screen, resulting you lost from the previous progress of thinking.

Maybe there are users happy with the panel, but please at least leave an option for the dialog and for those users who think efficiency more than 'fashion'.

If you decide this is a not-to-fix issue, I have no choice but go back to BC3.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not certain if we would have an option to toggle between a panel or dialog, but are there any design tips that might help the panel more meet your needs? A higher contrast for the panel or the found items to help draw your eye? Or the positioning of the found items on the screen?

[yumeyao]

maybe, at least, (leaving an option for) moving the panel to the bottom would help. (or making it float, but this is just same as a dialog) By doing so the text area won't move for the first time starting a search.

making it a dialog also benefits when you're uncertain about your search keyword/options - you move your mouse pointer shorter to get it pointed to the text area/search box.
consider a scenario you want to search a piece of code - you first think of 'WordA' and you do a search, if it doesn't satisfy you, you change the word to 'worda' or 'PhraseA' (synonyms) blah-blah. Here I use the word ***satisfy***, which means it neither returns no results nor returns too much unhelpful results. You can do a regex search (WordA|worda|PhraseA) but you need to type too much letters and you have to think up all the synonyms you can at the first time, which makes no sense if you think 'WordA' is the 99.9% case. Also you may don't want to use regex to have less results so you can view quickly, in case it doesn't satisfy you you search next.
This is the human logic way of doing things - you can't know 100% what's going to happen so you need to use the minimal effort you can afford to light the road - hence the **interactive** UI. Moving eye vision frequently is not good for human thinking(at least to me), that's why I love a dialog so much.

[Aaron]

Hello,

For this specific example, if you use Find (Ctrl+F), type to find something and hit enter, the default selection is left on the Find Text. You can actually immediately type PhraseA, which will replace the current find text, and hit Enter to re-search without clicking or moving the mouse. Up and Down arrows also work to control items in the MRU (previously searched phrases), or hitting Ctrl+F will re-populate the Find box with the current word the cursor is residing within. Do these shortcuts help?

While we certainly appreciate user preference for dialog vs panel, and are gathering feedback based solely on this position preference, we're also looking for various workflow examples to help improve one or the other view in all cases. If there are any other dilemmas you are running into, please let us know.

[yumeyao]

Yes, when I only want to change the keyword, I can go without moving the mouse(but still, I'm used to moving my eyes to track the words I'm typing).

The problem is, when I have to change search options, I have no choice but move the mouse to another position. You guys are programmers as well so you should have at least run into the cases you need to switch 'whole word' or 'case sensitivity' frequently.

[Chris]

When focus is in the search panel, you can use Tab to cycle between the Find text, Side, Prev/Next, and Close Automatically.

The current version doesn't support tabbing to the Regular Expression (Alt+X), Match Character Case (Alt+C), Whole Words Only (Alt+W), and Wrap Search (Alt+P) buttons. However, they do have the keyboard shortcuts I listed.

Will it improve your use case to make Tab cycle through the 4 buttons I listed?