9.3.0 Find dialog box

Hello,

After the update to 9.3.0 I can’t figure out how to get the find pop-out to open, it just brings up the one docked at the bottom. I believe in previous versions it was just a matter of changing the key binding, but I can’t find anything that works.

Any help would be appreciated.

The find dialog has been replaced with the docked version you see now.

That is disappointing, Is there any way of getting the find dialog? Or do I need to go back to 9.2?

There is no built-in way, but essentially the code just lives in its own window, so it wouldn’t be too hard to create an addon that opens the find stuff in a dialog.

For example, this opens it as a dialog:

window.openDialog('chrome://komodo/content/find/embedded.xul')

Or if I want to open it in replace mode:

ko.launch.find2_dialog_args = { "mode": "replace" }
window.openDialog('chrome://komodo/content/find/embedded.xul')

Or with a pattern:

ko.launch.find2_dialog_args = { "pattern": "foo" }
window.openDialog('chrome://komodo/content/find/embedded.xul')

Unfortunately none of this is documented, as it’s not exactly a “feature”, Komodo is just that “hackable”. Happy to help you find your way if you’re interested.

Note you could easily put these things into Userscripts and assign keybindings to them.

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I would like to clarify that you’re talking about the Find dialog and not Incremental find. If you’re opening the new docked Find Dialog the functionality should be identical to the previous, undocked find dialog. Is there missing functionality? Or do you just prefer floating a dialog window?

It shouldn’t be THAT disappointing. I prefer this new implementation personally.

  • Carey

Thank you for the details, I will play with this and see what I can come up with.

Or do you just prefer floating a dialog window?

Yes.

It shouldn’t be THAT disappointing. I prefer this new implementation personally.

That is fine, and I respect your opinion, however it is a pretty large ui change that I do not care for.

Excellent, just making sure we understood you correctly.

  • Carey

For the record; this was a consideration we made when this was implemented. Basically what we said was we’re gonna try it for a month in our pre-release, and if people speak up we’ll add the old dialog as an option. Literally no one spoke up so we considered the old dialog to be not worth the effort. Of course we knew that there would still be individuals that would prefer it (there always are users who don’t like a change), but we cannot cater to everyone. Luckily Komodo is extremely hackable.

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Hi Nathan, you know, most users are not in beta (I am not). I also prefer the floating find & replace dialog. It is not just preference: I work never-ending hours with Komodo, finding & replacing things by hundreds per day, and almost every time I go into finding / replacing my working space gets covered in the lower part of the window in a way that a) distracts me (more than the appearance of a floating window) and b) covers relevant parts of the code so frequently I move into scrolling to see what got covered. It was really more productive (for me) to have find/replace popping up floating, that relatively small rectangle, that I could also put to the side and keep it visible while working with the whole workspace visible (typically half of my large screen is used by Komodo).

So: would it be possible to have this option to have find/replace as a floating window as you say? Many thanks in advance.

I appreciate your feedback @ecterrab, we’ll consider bringing it back as an option for future versions. Might be a good question to ask in a survey, because as it stands you are one of very few users who has spoken up about this.

Of course I realize only a minority of our users use the pre-release, but alas that is the best way for us to get a general feel for what our users like and dislike before releasing it to the wider audience. We’re not tonedeaf though, if the wider audience speaks up about a change we will be receptive of that feedback, as we are with yours.

Hi Nathan, thanks for the reply. I see also that you are having a Komodo 10 release in beta; could this option be in this release 10? Thanks.

10 is set to release soon so unfortunately there is no chance of that. Note also that I said we will consider it, I cannot promise that we will in fact add an option for this.

Hi. I wanted to know if this option has been allowed, or will be. For me it’s been a relevant issue. The amount of screen taken by the default Find lower window is sufficiently big to both distract my attention from the code and take a relevant portion of what I see, while the small floating Find window really facilitates my work. I currently downgraded to last Komodo 8.5.4 in order to have the floating Find again, and since then my productivity increased. I realize as well that for others the current default may result more confortable or convenient. I am only asking for an option for my case that I believe is also the case of others who for varied possible reasons couldn’t vocalize their opinion here in the forum. I am also not asking for this option to be the default - I only wanted to have the option in order to upgrade again and take advantage of the new features without having to impact my (mathematics specific programming activity) productivity. Thanks.

Hey @ecterrab,

Thanks for getting back to us on this. It’s a shame 10 isn’t working out for you. I don’t think anything has moved forward with this as no other user has mentioned it.

Given the lack of interest in the issue I think this falls under Add-on or Userscript territory. @nathanr mentioned this above:

If you’re interested in this option please start a new thread and we’ll be happy to assist you.

  • Carey

Hi Careyh. Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately, the solutions you offer would require for me to start coding the Find & Replace window … also using different scripts for each different action of what is standard in Find & Replace. In Komodo 8 all of these things are there, available automatically. I realize I miss a number of new features. I used Komodo 9 for more than one year trying to get used to the new Find & Replace. At some point I decided to return to Komodo 8. For me the new functionality I miss is not worth the distraction and loss of screen space each time I do a search & replace. It is unfortunate for me that this is not allowed as an option. Thanks anyway.

Hey @ecterrab,

Another option would be to take the find dialog code that was in Komodo 8 and create an add-on out of it. That code can be found here: https://github.com/Komodo/KomodoEdit/tree/8.5.4/src/chrome/komodo/content/find

If you asked for help from @Defman or @babobski they might be able to give you help/guidance with the add-on, as well as any help us devs can provide. This is just a suggestion. I understand that you could be very busy and can’t possible work on something like this.

Unfortunately we have a tight schedule for the next year and this just hasn’t had any action so we can’t rationalize devoting dev hours to adding the dialog back in.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Edgardo.

  • Carey

I don’t have any good solutions in my mind so I’d stick to userscripts for each panel.

Played around with the old code Wednesday, tried to get the old find window working using overlay’s and the override method. Butt getting the old code to work needs quite a bit of work to get it running, a lot has changed.

I totally missed the post from @nathanr played around yesterday with the snippets, and I think it would be doable to create a addon for this. I got the find screen tuned a bit so it can be used as standalone:

I already wanted to look if i can implement this feature:

So creating a find addon would be a good start in the right direction, I think somewhere next week I can have a beta release ready for the find window addon.

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@babobski, thanks B. Let us know if we can help at all.

  • Carey