Overview:

In a new nautilus window, using type-ahead find to open files or subfolders will work properly up to a few times in a row, but after that, the type-ahead find text field will appear after one character is typed but disappear after any additional characters are typed. If no text is typed for several seconds, or if the escape key is hit, the text field will re-appear when another single character is typed, but again, typing more than one character will cause the text field to disappear again. Closing the window and opening a new nautilus window fixes the problem temporarily.


To reproduce:

1. Open a nautilus window, and attempt to navigate several folders deep by opening sub-folders with type-ahead find. Make sure to type multiple characters to select each folder.

2. After doing this a few times (particularly, the problem will always occur for me after reaching a folder with 50 or more files in it), the type-ahead find text field will disappear when the second character of a folder name is typed. Continuing to type the folder name will not cause the text field to re-appear, but the field can re-appear in two ways:

3a. If no text is typed for about 5 seconds, then starting to type the folder name again will cause the same problem: typing the first character will make the text field appear (with that single character in it), but typing any more characters makes the field disappear.

3b. If instead, you hit escape, and then type another character, the text field will reappear, and the newly-typed character will appear in the text field after all previously-typed characters, including any characters typed while the text field disappeared.


Examples:

Example 1:
Navigate nautilus to a folder with 50+ files, including a subfolder "foobar".
Type "f".
[The type-ahead find field appears with "f" in it.]
Type "oobar".
[The type-ahead find field disappears.]
Hit escape, and type another single character, "z".
[The type-ahead re-appears, with "foobarz" in it.]
Type another character.
[The type-ahead field disappears again.]

Example 2:
Navigate nautilus to a folder with 50+ files, including a subfolder "foobar".
Type "f".
[The type-ahead find field appears with "f" in it.]
Type "oobar".
[The type-ahead find field disappears.]
Wait for 5 seconds.
Type "z".
[The type-ahead find field re-appears, with "z" in it.]
Type another character.
[The type-ahead find field disappears.]


Platform:
nautilus version 3.2.0-0 in a new install of Ubuntu 11.10.