FindBar Tweak shouldn't highlight text based on selections made in user-editable fields

[ronjouch]

(followup to a behavior first revealed in #102)

Problem: I use the Tweaks → When Selecting Text → Fill the Findbar with the selected text option of so that your addon behaves like HighlightAll (or any code editor). It works fine and correctly highlights instances of what's selected.

However, and contrarily to HighlightAll, it also highlights selections made in user-editable fields (like <input> and <text>), which feels weird because it ends up highlighting words (or part of words) that I transiently select as part of the editing process and not because I actually want to highlight them.

A video being worth a thousands pictures being worth a thousand words, this screencast (webm, 1MiB) should be a million times more convincing than anything I can write.

Proposed solution: maybe FindBar Tweak could default to not highlighting anything based on text typed by the user in any kind of modifiable field.
→ What do you think of an additional '... but not when inputting text inside entry fields' sub-option that would be checked by default and be placed below Tweaks → When Selecting Text → Fill the Findbar with the selected text?
And it's the first idea that comes to mind, but maybe you have better ways to solve this glitch?

Thank you for your addon!

[Quicksaver]

I agree, I will add this in a future release.

[Quicksaver]

Thanks for the suggestion!

[DavidGP]

Yes please! This behaviour is terrible (sorry!) and almost makes me uninstall FBT every time :(

[Drugoy]

I'd rather vote against that proposed change.
The more there are places to search in - the better it is.

[Quicksaver]

It will be an option of course. :)

[Drugoy]

If so - then I don't mind at all: optionality is awesome.

[DavidGP]

And: optionality is better than omission

...of this bug from hell

[DavidGP]

I take the liberty to copy the current discussion from the review page here in order for it not to get lost:
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Is it really necessary to censor critical reviews? Rated 3 out of 5 stars

by David.P on June 7, 2014 · permalink · translate

As always, this add-on is great, in principle. One of the most important add-ons in my view anyway. However, and sorry for having to say that again, FindBar Tweak makes user editable text boxes on webpages almost unusable.

As soon as you highlight any text in an editable text box, FindBar Tweak goes completely crazy highlighting stuff all over the place. Even if you highlight one single letter only in a text box, every single occurrence of that very letter gets highlighted not only in the text box, but in the entire current webpage:
http://i.imgur.com/P06ETzg.png

Sorry but this bug is pathetic, and I will continue to moan about it until it gets finally fixed -- still hoping that FindBar Tweak does not turn into abandonware after all because it seems that there has been no significant development and bugfixing since January.

Hoping for a fix which will make me donate a significant amount.

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by Quicksaver (Developer) on June 7, 2014 · permalink · translate

First of all, reviews are not the place for bug reports or support requests, which is why your reviews keep being deleted by moderators, and this has a simple solution as I keep telling you: disable the preference "Fill the findbar with the selected text".

However, that is the intended behavior by default when using that preference, if you select some text anywhere, the findbar will find it, everywhere, it doesn't distinguish between the places where the text is in a webpage.

I have already told you (repeatedly) that I will add the option to restrict this to text boxes or to wherever the text selection is. But this relies on the current rewrite of the add-on I'm doing, because as the add-on is written now, it's next to impossible to add what you want.

I've also already told you I have not abandoned development! Last month I spent over two weeks almost full-time just on the FBT rewrite and I'm not even half-way done. Yes, it is that drastic, but I'm surprised you keep complaining to be honest, you've been to the support page and you've seen the amount of work I still have to do on FBT (and not everything is listed in the issues there even, there's more!).

I do understand that for you the current behavior is not optimal, but that's not even a bug, it's the expected behavior. Again, if you don't like it, disable that preference, it's really that simple, that preference wasn't made for those (like me and apparently you) who select text all the time in their browser while writing, or even just reading.

And you must also understand that I don't live for (or of!) FBT, I will add this option you ask for but it will still take time, as there's a lot more that I have to do before it. Honestly, using words like "pathetic" and "abandon" won't help with this task at all, if anything they only take away my will to dedicate to it the little free time I have...

[DavidGP]

Thanks Quicksaver,
from your reply I take two items:

First, obviously there is a major update coming, which is absolutely great and takes away my fear of FBT eventually getting abandoned (like it has happened to so many other great add-ons).

Second, there is a way to disable that "feature from hell" (of highlighting text in editable text boxes)!!!

Honesty, I didn't know that and I don't remember that you had told me that workaround any time before! If I had known this, I wouldn't have gotten on your nerves all the time about it.

Therefore sorry if I should have overlooked your respective mention of that solution.

Looking forward to the next version very much, and hoping that many people will donate because I know that programming is very hard work according to the saying "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent transpiration".

Keep up the great work.

[Quicksaver]

I figured you couldn't have read my previous replies. :)

You should definitely verify your account settings at AMO, to make sure you have e-mail notifications enabled, otherwise you will keep missing replies to your reviews, not just from me but possibly from developers of other add-ons as well. Also, if you do have the notifications enabled, you might want to double-check your spam folder, to make sure they're not ending up there either.

The e-mail notifications should contain the message/reply that was posted in them, which is why I thought it was weird that you never received any of my replies. Even if they're deleted at AMO, you should still have received the notifications with the replies in your inbox (in normal circumstances at least).

And thanks for updating the review as well! I'm sure a moderator will soon stumble upon it and delete it though, but I'm fine with keeping it like that at least until I finish updating the add-on, even if only to let people know that particular problem has a "solution" and that development hasn't stopped. :)

[DavidGP]

Thanks Quicksaver, for your fast reply. I shall check those e-mail notification settings!

OTOH, just seeing that unchecking the option "Fill the findbar with the selected text" disables automatic highlighting of all occurrences of the selected text completely... :-/

Well, for the time being, I then shall press Ctrl+F if I want highlighting.

Anyway, I hope that one of the next versions will make it possible to have automatic highlighting on the page, while at the same time not doing anything to, you know, text boxes :)

What's more, I also look forward very much to multi-highlighting at some stage, as already discussed previously here:
#76 (comment)

Best regards
David

[Quicksaver]

Both of those will definitely be on the next version, and I'll make sure I upload a beta version as soon as I code them in for you to try out early. ;)

Also, you can try the following:

• enable "Remove highlights when the Findbar is closed" in Highlights
• enable "Fill the Findbar with the selected text" in Tweaks
• disable "Show the Quick Findbar when selected text is used" in Tweaks

Like this you'll be able to make text selections at will without highlighting the page automatically. Then, when you do want the highlights just open the find bar through Ctrl+F and everything will work as it does now. And when you no longer want the highlights you just close the find bar again the same way.

Perhaps that way you can manage your highlights more easily? Or maybe not, but it's worth a try for now I guess, until I finish adding those features at least.

[DavidGP]

Both of those will definitely be on the next version

I'm impressed, and very much looking forward to it!

Thank you for the suggested settings combination! I have additionally enabled the setting "Ctrl+F also closes the Findbar" -- and now things are almost perfect, I just disable the find bar as long as I am in a, you know, text box :)

[DavidGP]

Anyway, I hope that one of the next versions will make it possible to have automatic highlighting on the page while at the same time not doing anything to text boxes :)

What's more, I also look forward very much to multi-highlighting at some stage, as already discussed previously here:
#76 (comment)

Both of those will definitely be on the next version

???

[Quicksaver]

@DavidGP who wrote in #125:

Unfortunately, after one and a half years and now even in the completely rewritten extension, the problem is still present.
:(

I'm replying to you here because there's no point in keeping two issues to track the same thing.

Unfortunately I was overly optimistic about many features before. You can obviously tell that there is so much that I had wanted to include but it has been next to impossible to do most of it yet. I'm very sorry about not being able to keep my word about this so far. :(

An option to not use selected text from input fields in the sidebar is on my shortlist of things to do, although I have no release date to give you. I'll try to squeeze it in for the next release, although no promises there. Highlighting multiple words in different colors will definitely take longer though.

[DavidGP]

OK thanks -- looking forward especially to the "not use selected text from input fields" feature.

[Quicksaver]

Well that was so easy now that I'm kind of ashamed I didn't do it sooner. :|

Care to give beta version 2.1b2 a try? https://github.com/Quicksaver/FindBar-Tweak/releases/tag/v2.1b2

[Quicksaver]

I forgot to mention, there's the option to re-enable the previous (current) behavior in the Tweaks pane in the add-on preferences.

[DavidGP]

Perfect! Thank you!

[Quicksaver]

Great! Let me know if you run into any trouble with it. I'm sorry again about the big delay in implementing this.

[DavidGP]

Oops, the "(don't) fill with text selected in editable elements" option seems to be defunct in Gmail. As soon as I select anything when editing a mail draft, it selects the same on the entire page :(

[Quicksaver]

Good catch! This will be fixed in the next release.

[DavidGP]

thanks!

[DavidGP]

I'm still seing this problem in Gmail! :(

[Quicksaver]

Hmm, maybe they changed something recently. I'll take a look.

[Quicksaver]

I think the new reply form they have. It seems to select everything in the reply textbox when you click outside of it... Which is just weird behavior on their part but whatever, let me try to figure out a way to prevent this.

[Quicksaver]

Hmm, it's not that gmail itself is selecting the contents of the reply box, it's that it's extremely easy (too easy) to select everything when you click outside of it.

For instance, if you place the cursor in the reply box and type in anything, then click outside with the mouse absolutely stopped, then it shouldn't select any text in the reply box as expected. But if you click outside while the mouse is moving, then it will "think" you dragged the mouse to select the actual textbox in the reply box (which also selects its contents of course).

Still bad behavior on their part, but can you confirm this is what seems to happen for you too? A fix for this will be far too specific, and if this is not your case then there's no point in even bothering and I should try something else.

[Quicksaver]

Turns out I was able to find a more general fix that doesn't rely on gmail keeping its current exact page structure indefinitely. Can you try beta version 2.1.9b2 and see if it fixes the issue for you as well?

[DavidGP]

Works perfect so far -- thanks!

[Quicksaver]

I'm glad to hear it. Let me know if it happens again. :)