Highlighting found items

[vamp07]

Any chance we could get the program to highlight in the viewer occurrences of the search term? Something along the lines of what Infoselect does.

[ExtraLean]

Originally posted by vamp07
Any chance we could get the program to highlight in the viewer occurrences of the search term? Something along the lines of what Infoselect does.

I was *just* thinking the same thing... it would also be nice if the search results weren't "hidden" after I double-click on one of them. The search results pane turns into the "Child Items" pane. It would be nice, for example, if these were separate panes so that I could dock the serach results elsewhere and refer to them until I don't need them anymore.

It would also be nice if performing a search would activate the "Find Next" feature so that pressing F3 would jump to the newly searched for term/phrase. Currently, if all you do is perform a Search (Ctrl+F), (without actually doing a Find in Item (Ctrl+Shift+F)) the F3 key doesn't work. The exception being that you've already "activated" the Find Next by already performing a Find in Item, but then it searches for the term that I'm not interested in anymore. Basically, performing a Search should set the Find Next term if it is empty, or replace the one that is there if it is not empty. This is standard to how most other apps behave (developer IDEs, etc.).

One last suggestion. After performing a search, the "Item Details" window requires focus before anything can be done with the keyboard. (I.e, the Find in Item, Find Next, and Replace... menu items are disabled until I manually click on the main item window.) Couldn't the keyboard shortcuts and menu items for these (and possibly others?) just *work* regardless if that window has the focus or not? Whether I've just performed a search, or even clicked on an item in the Data Explorer Tree Ctrl+Shift+F doesn't invoke the Find dialog for the selected item in the tree.

[kinook]

Any chance we could get the program to highlight in the viewer occurrences of the search term? Something along the lines of what Infoselect does.We considered it, but here are some of the difficulties:

1) There are several different detail pane viewers, and supporting automatic navigation and hilighting for each one would be quite a bit of effort.
2) The search match might not even be in the detail pane for an item, since matching is also done on item attribute values.
3) Except for the simplest single-word search, the match might be in multiple places across the item, making highlighting even more complicated. And for many advanced searches, there might not be anything that can specifically be hilighted (for instance, searching on an item being of a certain template, etc.).

But we will consider a limited form of highlighting for quick searches on web page items and perhaps rich text items.


I just found "open shortcut" although on my keyboard it does not work. Selecting it from the right click menu does do the right thing. Wish I could tell UR to use it's own browser doing an "
open shortcut"I believe this was answered in http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?threadid=778


it would also be nice if the search results weren't "hidden" after I double-click on one of them. The search results pane turns into the "Child Items" pane. It would be nice, for example, if these were separate panes so that I could dock the serach results elsewhere and refer to them until I don't need them anymore.One feature we have on the list, which I believe will address your request, is supporting multiple tabs for different items, so you could open a search result item in another tab and switch back and forth between the search item+results and result item(s) and their details (since all panes would reflect the item for the active tab). For now, you can use the forward/back functionality to return to the search after navigating to a search result item.


It would also be nice if performing a search would activate the "Find Next" feature so that pressing F3 would jump to the newly searched for term/phrase...Couldn't the keyboard shortcuts and menu items for these just *work* regardless if that window has the focus or not?These are great suggestions; we'll add them to the list.

[ExtraLean]

Originally posted by kinook
But we will consider a limited form of highlighting for quick searches on web page items and perhaps rich text items.

But why limit it to just those item types? That just seems, um well, limiting :-) It does seem like a fairly complex issue, and limiting the "form" of highlighting as you say would be fine, but why not have that limited form of highlighting available across all item types?

Originally posted by kinook
One feature we have on the list, which I believe will address your request, is supporting multiple tabs for different items, so you could open a search result item in another tab and switch back and forth between the search item+results and result item(s) and their details (since all panes would reflect the item for the active tab). For now, you can use the forward/back functionality to return to the search after navigating to a search result item.

Well, sort of but not really, unless I've misunderstood your suggestion. The idea would be to have the search results visible at all times until I'm done with them, ie in their own pane perhaps. The concept of switching back and forth, whether by a separate tab or not, is just not quite the same. It still interrupts with flow. That said, I'm really looking forward to the multiple tab feature for info items!

[lena]

Originally posted by ExtraLean
I was *just* thinking the same thing... it would also be nice if the search results weren't "hidden" after I double-click on one of them. The search results pane turns into the "Child Items" pane. It would be nice, for example, if these were separate panes so that I could dock the serach results elsewhere and refer to them until I don't need them anymore.
I would very much like this too.
Lena.

[vamp07]

I think highlighting searches that indicate everything found is a must. It's probably my #1 "wish it had" items. This makes searches immensely more useful. As you get more and more data into your dB it's need just keeps growing. Not only should a search highlight all items but when going to that item it should scroll to the first occurrence. I have no doubt it will be difficult to implement but it's really needed. Actually a rethinking of how UR returns search results is probably needed. The fact that when you click on a found item you are really leaving the context of the search is probably the underlying problem that makes implementing something along these lines more difficult.

[ExtraLean]

Originally posted by vamp07
I think highlighting searches that indicate everything found is a must. It's probably my #1 "wish it had" items. This makes searches immensely more useful. As you get more and more data into your dB it's need just keeps growing. Not only should a search highlight all items but when going to that item it should scroll to the first occurrence. I have no doubt it will be difficult to implement but it's really needed. Actually a rethinking of how UR returns search results is probably needed. The fact that when you click on a found item you are really leaving the context of the search is probably the underlying problem that makes implementing something along these lines more difficult.
Well said, and I *completely* agree with all of your points. I hope the dev team takes this *very* seriously.

[lena]

Let me add a me-too too, I completely agree with you. The search capabilities are what sold me on UR. I love the great nested boolean searches that make it possible to search my documents like they are a relational database. So it is very important that the search capabilities are well integrated in the rest of the program.

[blankenb]

I'd like to add another "me too" vote for the highlighting feature.

[kinook]

Highlighting of matching item text in search results is available in UR v4.
http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/Manual/searchdialog.htm