Screenshot of performing "Find as you type" in
Mozilla Firefox. "ency" was being typed
and the first matched text was highlighted in
green.
Screenshot of a find as you type toolbar in IE7, with "highlight all" feature turned on.
In computing, incremental find, or inline find/progressive find, is a feature that
can be found in various applications that involves the searching of text string. Usually, in contrast to traditional find, no
modal window is used. A keyboard shortcut,
usually "/", is assigned to invoke the find function.
As the user types, the matched text is found (and usually highlighted). It can also find next/previous matched text. This is
more robust than traditional find as finding is done immediately when typing starts. Also, it is better in terms of
usability as no modal window is used. In the case of modal find, the user may need to move the
modal window around, as it can block the part of the screen which contains the matched text.
Examples
Non-modal incremental find is not only found in most modern web browsers like
Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox,
Opera and Konqueror, but also in
Apple Computer's iTunes & Spotlight (which searches the entire computer), Microsoft's
Windows Vista, Windows Media Player and
Windows Live Messenger, and many text applications like Emacs, Archy, Vim, NetBeans IDE, less and Eclipse. In Mozilla jargon, it is coined as Find As You Type
(FAYT).
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
