| Summary: | [UI consistency] "Find in Files" has no close button and some ways to open it up don't make it obvious how to close it | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Applications] kate | Reporter: | Ellie <el> |
| Component: | search | Assignee: | KWrite Developers <kwrite-bugs-null> |
| Status: | RESOLVED NOT A BUG | ||
| Severity: | normal | CC: | waqar.17a |
| Priority: | NOR | ||
| Version First Reported In: | 25.04.2 | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Platform: | postmarketOS | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Latest Commit: | Version Fixed/Implemented In: | ||
| Sentry Crash Report: | |||
| Attachments: | A screenshot showing the "Find in Files" dialog. | ||
Press "Esc" to hide it. Or click the "Search" button again to hide it. We don't provide close button for any of the panels because they can't be closed usually, they only hide. There are actions in the menu to toggle any of the panels under "View -> Toolview" My apologies but you seem to have missed some of my other suggestions: I'd like to point out that "Settings" > "Show Menubar" is a toggle, and so is "Tools" > "Hide Terminal panel" even though the text wouldn't suggest it. So why isn't CTRL+SHIFT+F a toggle and "Edit" > "Find in Files"? I feel like that would make sense. And pressing "Escape" doesn't actually hide it. Try it out, "Edit" > "Find in files" to open it up, then without touching anything else, press Escape. It seems like when the focus is on the search field it doesn't work. > And pressing "Escape" doesn't actually hide it. Works here. Try out the latest version. There was a bug in hiding panels. OR If you have a "Context" panel, hide it in Behaviour settings. > So why isn't CTRL+SHIFT+F a toggle and "Edit" > "Find in Files"? Because it allows you to search a different word. Every time you press that it searches the current word under cursor. > Because it allows you to search a different word. Every time you press that it searches the current word under cursor.
I see. In that case I would recommend just adding a hide button to the panel. I mean I understand how the UI arrived where it did with all your explanations, but to a new user some of this likely will feel convoluted at first when they don't know why.
No. Because its not that simple to add it. And we will have to modify every panel to have the hide button for consistency. The button is already there: i.e., "Search" button in the bottom bar. I just tested the latest flatpak version kate 25.12.0, and escape doesn't close the panel either. It seems to uncheck some checkboxes instead. (If you press it twice it works, but again that seems like something most newcomers would be baffled by.) Another thing that you could consider to make this less confusing, is make CTR+F use the panel as well. Right now the inconsistency that both do almost the same job but one has a close button the other doesn't, seems rather strange. I personally think a top-right close button for the panels would also be a great choice to make this less hard to find, despite the status bar buttons already existing. It could be a small one, would still be better than nothing. Or some sort of down-arrow toggle button on the draggable border to instantly collapse it. You know, just some sort of more obvious visual clue to somebody new. Anyway, I think that's all the suggestions I have. > I just tested the latest flatpak version kate 25.12.0, and escape doesn't close
the panel either. It seems to uncheck some checkboxes instead. (If you press it
twice it works,
Thats intentional. If you have an ongoing search, then first esc will uncheck the boxes and remove search highlights in the documents
Sorry to take up any time at all, and I get most of this is somehow intentional, but perhaps somebody might want to take an overall big picture look at this and see if there's anything to tweak here. I hope some of the suggestions above are useful, even if you end up doing something entirely different. |
Created attachment 187693 [details] A screenshot showing the "Find in Files" dialog. SUMMARY The "Find in Files" has no close button, as far as I can tell. The "Edit" > "Find in files" entry also doesn't seem to be set up to be a toggle, which it perhaps should be. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Open "Edit" menu, click "Find in Files" 2. The "Find in Files" panel comes up 3. Try to find the close button for the panel, or to close it the way you opened it via "Edit" menu. OBSERVED RESULT There doesn't seem to be a close button like there is for the regular "Find" panel. It seems like it can be closed by grabbing the upper border and dragging down, but that doesn't seem particularly obvious especially since the "Find" dialog it doesn't work that way. It's not quite clear visually that the "Find in Files" is a panel type thing while "Find" isn't. I guess it might be less confusing to people who typically have the "Terminal" or "Output" panel enabled, where "Find in Files" seems to replace it, but when you start out with none of that open then compared to the "Find" dialog the lack of a close button seems confusing! EXPECTED RESULT It should probably have a close button so it is more similar to the "Find" dialog. Alternatively, e.g. pressing CTRL+SHIFT+F again while it is already open would be nice as a toggle to close it and also "Edit" > "Find in Files" could be turned into a toggle. I realize there is a "Search" toggle in the status bar too but that took me quite a while to find, since that's not where I opened it up. I hope some of those ideas are useful to make it slightly less surprising to close! SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: (available in the Info Center app, or by running `kinfo` in a terminal window) Linux/KDE Plasma: postmarketOS KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.6 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.13.0 Qt Version: 6.8.3 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION