GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 141963
Find as you type should be off by default
Last modified: 2007-05-31 12:44:24 UTC
I think the feature "Find as you type" should be off by default in Epiphany. The reason I think so is that it is an advanced feature which is unfortunately quite easy to trigger it by misstake. If it is triggered by misstake it is difficult for a newbie (as well as an experienced user who just doesn't know about the feature) to know what is going on and how to get out of it. I myself have triggered "Find as you type" by misstake several times. It has happened when I have missed a form field with the mouse cursor (causing the page body being focused instead of the form field) and I haven't noticed it until I have started typing. When you do this, Epiphany starts searching for links matching whatever you intended to write in the form field and it will beep if it doesn't find it. If you're unlucky, what you just typed matches a link further down the page an focus jumps to that place.
I vote wontfix. This is an important accessability feature.
As a compromize, can it be changed to require a keyboard combination to start it? That way the accidental starting of it is avoided, but people requiring accessibility can still easily start it.
I agree with xan. Andre improvements to this functionality needs to be done in mozilla itself, because we just inherit it.
Hm, mozilla already has that functionality. The pref is "accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart". If you set it to "false" in about:config, you have to explicitly start a find with / (text) or ' (links).
IHMO we should stay we the default. But I'm ccing Calum and Bill about it since it's an accessibility issue.
why is this "an important accessibility feature" ? As far as I can see, the feature actually causes problems for screenreader users.
Because mozilla people claim it I guess :) From http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/why/ "Firefox also features sophisticated 'Type-Ahead Find' for links that make it easier for users with accessibility needs (such as those using screen readers, or even laptop users with inconvenient pointing devices) to select links. Simply start typing the name of the link that you want to select and Firefox will shift focus to it." I'd have no problems to disable autostart, if you think it's the better thing to do accessibility wise. Thanks a lot for the feedback, Bill.
It's true that some sort of link-navigation that doesn't require the mouse is a must for the default configuration. I suppose the type-ahead find ia one way to do this, but it obviously has some side-effects when entering forms (the initial comment in this bug report). Having a keyboard shortcut for enabling typeahead sounds like a very good idea however, since for some users I agree that the typeahead find will be an important accessibility aid. I am not sure how well it serves screenreader users however.
I'd probably vote for disabling autostart too. I'd be keen to try and make the typeahead feature more discoverable than it is in Mozilla, though (although I don't have any great ideas as to how)-- I only found out that I could use / to search in Mozilla by accident, and I had no idea I could use ' for links until I read Christian's comment there just now...
Mass reassigning of Epiphany bugs to epiphany-maint@b.g.o
Fixed in HEAD.
I had to back this out since it caused bug 165811.
It looks to me as if the patch had a logic error. Are you planning to find+fix that error, then reinstate this patch? I think we're agreed that typeahead find should be off by default...
We've uncovered a mozilla bug with that (see bug 165811), so I don't think we can re-disable this anytime soon.
The firefox behaviour is to enable typeahead when you press "/". This is a really good behaviour, IMHO. Is it possible for Epiphany to use it too ? It would be nice for both opinions.
This is fixed in cvs. Leaving open because we still need to file a bug report upstream in mozilla.
*** Bug 314752 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***