Issues with Find

ExtraLean · #1 02-02-2005, 11:01 PM

From version history (1.2):
"Make Find in Item menu item / shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+F) global and default the search value in the Rich Text editor's Find dialog to the last Quick Search value."

It seems like the default search value is not being set properly for me. When I do Ctrl+Shift+F on a new search term, close the dialog and come back to it, an old search term shows up... not the one I just searched for.

Stop... hold the presses.... I think I just found out what is happening. Re-reading the statement in the version history, it says that the Ctrl+Shift+F dialog defaults to the last "Quick Search" value. Hmmm... that seems a bit non-intuitive. I would have thought that the last term searched for with Ctrl+Shift+F would be the default? This all came up because using F3 to cycle through didn't work all the time (perhaps after switching docs and back). Then I realized it was looking for the last "Quick Search" value instead.

kevina · #2 02-07-2005, 11:53 AM

The current behaviour was added to facilitate finding the words in an Info Item that matched a Quick Search criteria.

As you mention, it is less than optimal for other Find in File operations (not following a Quick Search). The Find in File default criteria will be changed to default to the last criteria used in the next minor release of Ultra Recall.

kevina · #3 02-18-2005, 11:33 AM

Version 1.2a of Ultra Recall is available which updates the Find in File default criteria value as described above (as well as several other bug fixes and enhancements).

You can download the latest version of Ultra Recall here: http://www.kinook.com/UR/download.html

You can view the "How to Upgrade to a newer version of Ultra Recall?" FAQ entry here: http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...=&threadid=911

Note: Version 1.2a is a minor version update and is free to all licensed users of Ultra Recall.

ExtraLean · #4 02-18-2005, 01:10 PM

It still doens't seem to work as I would expect, but perhaps I'm missing something...

What would make the most sense, IMO, would be to be able to do the following:

1) Perform a quick search for "test", and all the documents that contain "test" are displayed.
2) Click on one of the documents to open it
3) Then by pressing F3 repeatedly it would cycle through all the instances of "test" within that document.

Keeping the "quick search" terms and the "Find" terms separate doesn't seem to make sense from a usability standpoint.

Am I missing something?

Check out the searching capability in KeyNote:
http://keynote.prv.pl
Just press F3 and the "Find" dialog pops up if there isn't already a search term specified for that instance (would be great if UR could do this too). Then I can enter a search term. Pressing F3 repeatedly cycles through the search terms. And, when it gets to the end of the document, it cycles to the next document and keeps finding matches. That would be ideal for UR, IMO. When I'm searching for something, I don't want it to stop with the current document (perhaps this could be user configurable for the users who *would* like it to stop). It just seems more intuitive that way.

Another thought just came to mind... I guess I'm just not used to having two ways to search for stuff, and it really hinders on the usability in my opinion. Here's why: when I'm looking for something, I want to see the actual content... not just a list of documents that contain it. So for me the "quick search" is usless (though I'm sure plenty of people feel differently) because it just shows me the documents that *contain* what I'm looking for instead of the actual content itself. Finding a way for these two types of searches to co-exist while keeping them both usable is key here.

Perhaps now that the "quick search" term and "find" term are treated separatly, if the ability was added to keep searching past the end of the current doucment (and into the next document(s)) was added, it would go a long way in alleviating this problem. I could just ignore the "quick search" feature and be happy searching the way I like to. Right now UR just beeps at me when it gets to the end of the document even though I know other documents contain what I'm looking for :/

One last final thought in that regard... it would be nice to allow the user to configure the keyboard shortcuts. In this instance, I'd like Ctrl+F to bring up the Find dialog, versus the Quick Search stuff. I know Ctrl+Shift+F does it but Ctrl+F is alreay ingrained in my brain ;-) That coupled with the fact that the "Search Results" pane doesn't respect the user's choice to Auto Hide makes it doubly painful because now I have to unpin it every time I make the mistake of pressing the "wrong" keyboard shortcut.

Thanks for listening!