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Dear Firefox, please fix the crappy Find UI already
Firefox is doing a lot of usability-related work recently. And really, it now sports a fairly usable UI. It's kind of sluggish at times, but it is my browser of choice, mainly for political reasons.
But one thing never fails to piss me off ... why does the Find function have to be so bad?
Many people use large monitors these days (and often, more than one). This means that we often have a large mass of text all over the screen, but we want to find just a single word. This is a common function, and both Opera and Chrome have taken major strides in order to make it usable.
Not only is Firefox's native Find unusable, I couldn't even find an extension that emulates Opera's far superior functionality. And if you're wondering what I'm talking about and why is it so different, just keep on reading after the jump and see screenshots of all three modern browsers doing a Find operation on the same Wikipedia page. You be the judge.
Firefox
This is our baseline for this comparison. What you're looking at here is a standard Wikipedia page at default zoom level on a 22" monitor. Can you see that word I'm searching for? It's way down there, at the bottom. If you look for it carefully, you can spot it now. But how easy is it to spot the next instance when the cursor jumps to it?
Firefox only highlights one instance of the word every time, and just jumps to the next when you hit Enter again. You then have to visually scan the entire window again and hunt for the highlighted text; sometimes this is easy, and sometimes it's really hard -- depending on the layout and the selection of colors on the page. Even MS Word 2010 does better than this, and it's not even a browser (I mean, it's meant for writing rather than reading).
Chrome
One step up is Chrome's interface. The major change here is that Chrome highlights all instances of the word on the current view, so you can easily see them at a glance. With Chrome, it doesn't feel like the text focus is jumping all over the screen. You know where it's going to go. Another nice touch (which you cannot see on the screenshot) is that the scrollbar shows nice, bright indicators wherever the word appears, also outside your current view. So if there's another instance of the word way down the page, you can instantly tell even before you jump to it. This is a nice, predictable interface.
Opera
And finally, Opera really sets the gold standard for Find. As with Chrome, the text you're looking for is highlighted, and the current instance is "extra highlighted". But one major difference is that as soon as you hit Find, the page dims. This way, every instance of the word really pops out and is super-visible. No way you're going to miss your text with Opera.
So Mozilla, whaddya say? With Firefox 4 coming out soon, is there a chance for one more UI fix?
Comments
35
Subscribe to commentsZackBoeJul 13th 2010 8:58PM
It's not some generic keyboard, and the esc key is more out of the way than normal. I'd just find it useful to close it with Ctrl + F
5hRreDDyJul 13th 2010 6:12PM
In this regard Safari on OS X (I don't know about the Windows version) has the best Find feature.
TuekstaJul 13th 2010 7:26PM
So
TuekstaJul 13th 2010 7:26PM
So, Erez, what do you say, why not switch to Opera? :)
PS_4Jul 13th 2010 7:41PM
I find that Firefox's search function is the most usable out of all 3 browsers, for the simple reason being that you don't need to RETYPE your search word when switching tabs, and it also saves your word when you close your search tab, so it's there when you reopen it. Anyone who doesn't know this hasn't done enough searching to form an opinion about browsers' search function.
Firefox > Opera > Chrome
Also, you might be able to change this in the other browsers, but I much prefer the search bar on the bottom, as in Firefox. Having it on top is downright awkward.
lawrence.kwok90Jul 13th 2010 10:50PM
Safari saves the search query across tabs also.
silversunJul 14th 2010 2:24AM
so i just hit ctrl f in chrome. it had my previous search term from another tab from about an hour ago saved in it... i'm running chrome beta
Ken SaundersJul 13th 2010 7:51PM
I use the Find All extension.
http://www.codedawn.com/find-all.php
I couldn't find the AMO listing, but I'm pretty sure it's hosted there.
"This add-on replaces the find bar's Highlight All button with a powerful Find All button, which highlights all search terms found and displays them in an easy to view list. The list displays a few words before and after the search term so you can quickly see the context of each match. It also shows a total of how many times the search term was found on the page. "
Offers some customization options too.
"It's kind of sluggish at times, but it is my browser of choice, mainly for political reasons"
That rocks.
I guess I'm what most would call a Firefox Fanboy. Despite that, I personally don't care for the new UI changes coming (not even a little), but Firefox will remain customizable and even if it didn't, and if I had to give up all of my add-ons, I'd still use it because I'm a supporter of Mozilla, not just a single piece of software.
JasJul 13th 2010 10:47PM
Here is that listing for Find All:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7299/
Also, there is something similar called Find In Tabs. It basically does what Find All does but also searches in other tabs that are open:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8078/
BigKennyJul 14th 2010 10:41AM
Is this a real?
Perhaps a writer who has a clue would be a good start to fixing this issue.
redappleJul 14th 2010 4:44AM
Dear Download Squad, stop acting like an tabloid.
Stuart HallidayJul 16th 2010 3:26PM
Another bad feature is the build-in spell checker because it does no phonetic suggestions.
So most of the time it can't guess the best word if you're dyslexic.
The main trouble with Firefox or Thunderbird is that to get a feature added or fixed you have to be a programmer and agree that the feature needs altering then do the fix.
With the commercial browsers, the browser designers decide and the programmer does the fixing and their opinion doesn't come into it.
So it doesn't matter if 1000 people want a bug fixed, if you can't find a programmer willing to do the fix it doesn't get done.
Take a look through the bug list in these two products and you'll find bugs 5 year or older that still haven't been fixed.
ZargggJul 14th 2010 9:30AM
This looks like a job for an extension! Get one of your friends to code one.
minibarJul 14th 2010 11:37AM
i've been a firefox advocate since before it was named firefox, but only b/c it was the best browser. lately i've gravitated toward chrome because it does things i want best, and though i've long expected firefox to regain the primary position, lately i've started to think it has become too set in it's (at times differing) ways so i'm now uncertain of it's ability to regain dominance. regardless, i would not choose a browser based primarily on politics. if internet exploder was the best browser, it would be my browser of choice (highly unlikely!) when i've tried opera and safari they don't live up to the jive.
TimJul 29th 2010 2:26PM
The author sees what he wants to see, and ignores what he doesn't want to see. Others have already pointed out that he completely missed the "Highlight all" button in Firefox.
He also conveniently omitted any criticism of other browsers when they have even worse flaws. For example, in Chrome, if there's a horizontal scrollbar, and the search term is some text that's 'behind' it, Chrome won't scroll to make it visible. Half the time I'm looking over the page for what Chrome is highlighting, when it's in fact Chrome is highlighting a search term that's not on the visible page!
Of course, this wouldn't be nearly as big a problem if Chrome scrolled so the search term was in the middle of the page, where it would be convenient to look at in context (you know, like Emacs has been doing for decades). The idea that in-page search should scroll the page so my results are on the very bottom line of the page is pretty broken design, too.