Bug 185034

Summary:	Find as you type
Product:	[Applications] dolphin	Reporter:	Tobias <flabbergasted>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Dolphin Bug Assignee <dolphin-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	kde-2011.08, kde, leonardo.la.malfa, nate, rrh, serg, spamfang1199, ungethym
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	16.12.2
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Compiled Sources
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Tobias 2009-02-20 16:32:29 UTC

Version: 1.2.80 (using Devel)
OS: Linux
Installed from: Compiled sources

Hi,

it would be nice to have find-as-you-type functionality in Dolphin just as in Firefox. I know that there is the filter bar but if I just want to quickly find a file in a folder with many files this is inconvenient because the file is not marked so it requires another click to mark it and open it and then another to reset the filter.

There is already the functionality in Dolphin that if you quickly type the beginning of a file name, it will scroll to that file and mark it. This should be enhanced in two ways:

1. The typed string doesn't have to be at the beginning of the file (so if I type "foo" and there are files barfoo.txt and foobar.txt it will mark barfoo.txt because it is alphabetically the first file with substring "foo". If I want it to mark foobar.txt I'd have to write "foob")

2. The timeout for the writing should be longer (at the moment you have to type really fast for it to work)

3. The written string should appear somewhere, either in the status bar or as a small popup (I believe this is already done in Nautilus and Krusader, but #1 is not implemented there).

I believe this would greatly enhance usability. Maybe the behaviour of #1 should be configurable.

Under Windows there is an Autohotkey Script collection called Ac'tivaid that has a script plugin that does just that for the Windows Explorer (however you have to hit F3 first to access it) and I use it all the time at work.

Thanks,

Tobias

Comment 1 Dotan Cohen 2009-06-26 11:58:22 UTC

> The typed string doesn't have to be at the beginning of the
> file (so if I type "foo" and there are files barfoo.txt and
> foobar.txt it will mark barfoo.txt because it is alphabetically
> the first file with substring "foo". If I want it to mark
> foobar.txt I'd have to write "foob")

In my opinion, the should match files/folders on match-in-middle if no match-on-beginning matches are found. So in your example typing "foo" would still find foobar.txt, even though barfoo.txt exists. However, typing "rfo" would find barfoo.txt even though it does not begin with that string.

I really like this idea.

Comment 2 Tobias 2009-06-26 16:51:32 UTC

Well, maybe this could be made configurable. I'd be ok with both methods. Only, it might look strange if I start typing and the window first scrolls down to foobar.txt when I type "foo" and if I type "." afterwards scrolls back to barfoo.txt.

Because of this I would have it always search in the current order direction (maybe even starting at the file that is currently marked). Since I would make "F3" or something find the next occurance, I can just type "foo" and press "F3" to find foobar.txt.

But however it is done, I'd like this to work at all. :)

Comment 3 Wojciech Ryrych 2010-09-19 20:54:56 UTC

I like the idea of this feature. Current solution is not user friendly even for people typing fast. There should have been visual feedback as you type.

Comment 4 Thorsten Staerk 2010-09-19 21:16:12 UTC

*** Bug 245804 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5 kde 2010-11-06 15:20:00 UTC

I have a few propositions to enhance the find-as-you-type functionality:

- If no text field is chosen in Dolphin, all typing should default to the filter bar (if it is activated in settings)

- When activated in settings, there should not be a close button next to the filter bar, because the visibility of filter bar is already controlled via the Tools menu. Instead, the filter bar should have a reset button that empties the current filter. Now the close button does not make a lot of sense.

- It would be extremely cool to be able to type regexps into the filter bar to quickly find files with a certain pattern

Comment 6 Jekyll Wu 2012-08-11 09:31:46 UTC

*** Bug 280247 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7 Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems) 2012-08-24 16:19:55 UTC

Resetting assignee to default as per bug #305719