Re: Bug: 'Search Text' does not work in framed sites.
On 6 Sep 2008 Tim Hill wrote:
In article <711cffd94f.ricp(a)user.minijem.plus.com>, Richard
Porter
<ricp(a)minijem.plus.com> wrote:
> I don't think a feature request should be necessary to
correct an
> obvious shortcoming.
Obvious to you perhaps.
Just consider a novice user viewing a web page. He or she has no
knowledge of html, framesets, etc. but sees a 'find text' icon on the
toolbar. He might reasonably assume that clicking on it would enable
him to find some text on the page.
If the page is a frameset and the 'find text' icon is not going to
find anything, then a message should be displayed telling the user to
click on the relevant part of the screen and press F4 or use the menu
option. It would be more user-friendly to search all the frames.
> Feature requests should be used for features over
> and above normal operation of the browser.
That's what you're asking for.
No, I'm saying the feature has been provided, but that it doesn't
quite fulfil the user's expectations.
> The search facility itself is a feature, but once it's been
> implemented the fact that it can't handle some types of pages is a bug
No it isn't. The failure was in the knowledge base of the user
about how
the browser works.
The user isn't expected to know how the browser works, but only how to
work the browser.
> (accepting that it can't at
> present be expected to find strings generated by javascript).
Say what now? Javascript don't work here so it won't generate
anything to
be found. To search the page /including scripts and tags/ hit f8 and
search in your editor. As with the search function, you need to click in
the frame you want to edit (or the address bar for the frameset) before
hitting f8.
If you had to view the source in an editor every time there would be
no point in having the find text facility at all. I'm just saying that
as NetSurf doesn't support javascript it can't search whatever text
any scripting might produce.
It is clear to this reader that you are asking for the functionality
of
the search function to be changed. That's a feature request. It would be
a bug if you searched for 'lemon' and found 'orange'.
Yes, and it would be a bug if I searched for 'lemon' and found nothing
even though 'lemon' was there.
Do you think that every frame and the frameset should all appear at
once in an editor in pressing f8? Please, God, no.
No, but then I wouldn't expect the novice/non-technical user to go
grovelling around inside the page source.
There are some of us who maintain web sites and the way the search
(and
edit) functions work is just fine and dandy, thanks. (Though I am not
averse to configurable change.)
I must admit that it's not a problem that's particularly troubled me,
but I would expect that a global text search facility would either
work or tell me that it's not going to work. The latter could be a
sensible solution. Pretending to work but finding nothing isn't.
--
_
|_|. _ Richard Porter http://www.minijem.plus.com/
|\_||_ mailto:ricp@minijem.plus.com