No way to clear the Search Results?

[AlleyDukakis]

Backspace doesn't clear them

Delete doesn't clear them

Escape doesn't clear them

...

[walt.farrell]

I just ignore them once I'm done. They'll go away (or change) when you do a new Find.

[GarryP]

I can’t seem to get rid of the search results either.

Deleting all my search characters and pressing Enter just leaves me with the last list of search results which, I would say, was wrong because it could be confusing.

I would say that if the search field contains nothing then the search results list should be empty.

Sounds like a good issue for an improvement request.

[AlleyDukakis]

Ya, at least ESCAPE key should clear search results.

they're driving me nuts

Also, after you press ENTER, the search box is no longer focused. So, if you start typing a new query, you'll be typing IN YOUR DOCUMENT.

I almost just lost a bunch of text.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Edited August 17, 2022 by AlleyDukakis

[GarryP]

7 minutes ago, AlleyDukakis said:

Also, after you press ENTER, the search box is no longer focused. So, if you start typing a new query, you'll be typing IN YOUR DOCUMENT.

In addition to that, I’ve just noticed that if I am editing the Find and Replace Find field and press Tab twice then the ‘focus’ moves to the document text and pressing Tab more adds tabs to the text.

I would have expected that using Tab in the Find and Replace Panel would keep the focus within that panel so I could, essentially, tab between the two fields in that panel, rather than the focus going to the text where I can accidentally add tabs without noticing while wondering why the Find field was not getting the focus.

I wonder if there is a good reason why the current functionality would be preferable to what I would expect?

[Pšenda]

11 minutes ago, AlleyDukakis said:

Also, after you press ENTER, the search box is no longer focused. So, if you start typing a new query, you'll be typing IN YOUR DOCUMENT.

I almost just lost a bunch of text.

This behavior and misunderstanding of the standards is really very annoying - especially for edit fields (X, Y, ....), when after entering/pressing Enter, the focus is lost, and pressing a number again leads to an unwanted change in Opacity. Which cannot be easily detected due to the lack of indication in the layers panel. Serif really couldn't do this.

[Dan C]

I've moved this thread to the Feedback section of the forums, as I feel it's better suited here.

If any of the behaviour you're coming across is seemingly unexpected, I'd recommend creating separate bug reports for these for our teams to investigate and clear up

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I just ignore them once I'm done. They'll go away (or change) when you do a new Find.

I don't.

They can still be replaced by entering something, or nothing, in the replace field and hitting the replace button.

This is a very bad design and does need to be fixed.

[thomaso]

39 minutes ago, Dan C said:

I've moved this thread to the Feedback section of the forums, as I feel it's better suited here.

@Dan C, like @Old Bruce I experience this missing ability to clear the search results as an issue which can cause unwanted text changes, in particular as long a search always effects an entire document. Thus it feels more like a bug or oversight than a missing feature.

Nevertheless, I just added this to the existing request thread about the missing ability to limit a search in "Find And Replace" for Selection –> Frame –> Page –> Story / Section –> Document.

[Dan C]

8 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I experience this missing ability to clear the search results as an issue which can cause unwanted text changes, in particular as long a search always effects an entire document. Thus it feels more like a bug or oversight than a missing feature

 

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

If any of the behaviour you're coming across is seemingly unexpected, I'd recommend creating separate bug reports for these for our teams to investigate and clear up

I ask the above as the ability to clear the search falls under a Feature Request, any issues that arise due to a lack of this feature need to be reported separately as a bug please!

[MikeTO]

On 8/17/2022 at 7:44 AM, GarryP said:

In addition to that, I’ve just noticed that if I am editing the Find and Replace Find field and press Tab twice then the ‘focus’ moves to the document text and pressing Tab more adds tabs to the text.

I would have expected that using Tab in the Find and Replace Panel would keep the focus within that panel so I could, essentially, tab between the two fields in that panel, rather than the focus going to the text where I can accidentally add tabs without noticing while wondering why the Find field was not getting the focus.

I wonder if there is a good reason why the current functionality would be preferable to what I would expect?

I cannot duplicate this tabbing behaviour on macOS - I can tab between Find and Replace all day and it never gives focus to the document. I must press Return/Enter. I wish Esc would cancel and shift focus to the document since there's no way to do that without using the mouse.

On 8/17/2022 at 7:36 AM, AlleyDukakis said:

Also, after you press ENTER, the search box is no longer focused. So, if you start typing a new query, you'll be typing IN YOUR DOCUMENT.

I believe that Return/Enter must change focus to the  document because Find/Replace is a panel and not a dialog. In every other panel with a text box you can press Return to complete the action and return focus to the document so it must work this way for consistency. It might be nice if Affinity offered both a panel and a dialog for the two main user patterns of finding/replacing, just like Office 365 does. But if I had to choose between a panel and a dialog I'd opt for what Affinity has now. It is very compact and lets me work on each result before clicking on the next one.

My only real beef with Find/Replace other than the lack of Esc which I really don't care about is the issue of stale results. Search for something with multiple results. Delete the found text for the first one. Click the second one to view it. Now click the first one again - Affinity won't go back to that page because there is no text on that page that matches the find query - this is a stale result. Affinity should remove a result from the list when it no longer exists.

In the meantime, those who really want to clear the search results can do so by typing something like qq and pressing Return/Enter. It's not a great shortcut but it's better than nothing.