"Repeat find" command for the editor

This section is for suggesting features and capabilities that you would like to see in Impict, Help & Manual's integrated screenshot editor and enhancer.

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Marek Jedlinski
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jul 17, 2011 3:55 am

"Repeat find" command for the editor

Unread post by Marek Jedlinski »

H&M Standard 5.6.0, build 1340 on Win 7 32-bit

As a new user, I've just an extremely unpleasant surprise: there does not seem to be a "Repeat find" command in H&5. Typical Windows shortcuts (F3 or Shift+F4 as in Office) do not work, and the command (or anything like it) is absent in the list of commands in the Customize dialog.

Obviously searching is quite a common operation when you spend long hours and days entering and editing text. I'm afraid the following precisely reflects my reaction to this omission... and I don't use it lightly! :frustration:

It seems (and I still hope I'm wrong) that every time I want to repeat the last search I have to go through the Find dialog box. But that dialog box itself is fairly inconvenient as well. Type your search pattern, hit Enter. If found, H&M will focus the editor and keep the dialog box open. Since the dialog does not have focus anymore, hitting Escape will not close it. I can either continue working with the Find dialog box right in the middle of the screen, or reach for the mouse to close it, or click Ctrl+F again just so that I can close the dialog with Escape.

Oh, and one more thing: because H&M does not close the Find dialog, it often covers the found text in the editor! Now after hitting Enter you have to move the dialog with the mouse just to find out if a match exists. Really frustrating, and I haven't seen such poor design in a long time even in free text editors, seriously!

Dear Authors: usability is really important in an application which users interact with for many hours at a time. Please give it some thought and consider the following suggestions:

* Implement a "Repeat find" feature to which a keyboard shortcut can be assigned

* Add a configuration option to automatically close the Find dialog (perhaps a checkbox in the dialog itself, since there is some empty space there)

* Reposition the Find dialog box dynamically, so that it never covers the match in the editor. (Irrelevant if the dialog can be auto-closed).
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Tim Green
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Re: "Repeat find" command for the editor

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Marek,

We're already looking into possibilities of improving the search interface. You already have a repeat find option inside the find dialog itself. This works fine if you have a big monitor or two monitors, but I agree it can get a bit cramped if you are on an old computer with a small monitor. Similarly, you also have a "Find All" option that gives you a search results report that you can then browse quite easily. But this also works best on large monitors and dual monitor systems.

Thanks for the feedback. :)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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