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Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities
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Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities


  • Subject: Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities
  • From: Rick Mann <email@hidden>
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:27:11 -0800

On Jan 23, 2013, at 21:56 , Joar Wingfors <email@hidden> wrote:

>> Any way to get a separate search & replace dialog instead of that banner across the top?
>
>
> No. What's your reason for preferring a separate panel?

Many reasons, I'll try to explain:

- That search area is too small, so many of the options are hidden. It's a lot of steps to reveal the options and set things. Moreover, many of the choices are in menus, so you can't see all your options at once; you have to go hunting for them.

- I can't open the search, set my search critera, and "do" the search, and have focus return to the document. But my *attention* returns to the document. So I frequently end up either undoing (one replace too many), or typing, and having those actions affect one of the search fields, not the text I'm staring at in the document.

To close the search bar quickly from the keyboard, I have to hit ESC, which is still conceptually for me a "cancel" operation, as in, I want to cancel my search. "Do"ing the search doesn't dismiss that search bar.

This is typically what I do, very very quickly in something like text wrangler:

- Command-E to enter the currently-selected text into the search field.
- Command-F to bring up the search dialog.
- Tab to tab into the replace dialog (which is, by default, not shown in the Xcode search bar, although I mostly fixed that by changing key assignments).
- Type my new text
- possibly adjust search criteria, with a click or two of a checkbox (no menus to pore over).
- hit enter, which finds the first result.
- Command G to find the next, or Command L to replace and find next.

If I go too far, or realize I set the search parameters incorrectly, undo works immediately; I don't have to first get out of the search bar focus.

By the way, 4.5.2 has a really mind-numbing bug where undo frequently undoes the change, and then puts the insertion point at the top of the document and scrolls there. Very disorienting. No amount of undo/redo gets me back to where I was. (I have long used a quick undo/redo to get myself back to where I was typing).

This series of steps is very fast for me, but I can't seem to learn an equivalent in Xcode, especially since I go back to other editors frequently.

A separate dialog (or even a sheet, although I hate waiting for the animation, but I can fix that) can also allow for much larger find & replace fields.

One other bit: Text Wrangler lets me type "option-Tab" or "option-Return" to enter tab and return characters into the S&R fields, but that's an enhancement request.


--
Rick




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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities
      • From: Joar Wingfors <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities (From: "Andy O'Meara" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities (From: Gavin Stokes <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities (From: Alex Zavatone <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities (From: Rick Mann <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities (From: Joar Wingfors <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities (From: Rick Mann <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Xcode 4 UI customizability curiosities (From: Joar Wingfors <email@hidden>)

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