Firefox Tip: Begin Finding when you begin typing

Published on April 27, 2005
By Pete Freitag

Here's something a co-worker showed me today that is pretty handy. In Firefox, goto Tools - Options - Advanced - Accessibility, and check Begin Finding when you begin typing.

What this does essentially is open's the FireFox Find toolbar (Ctrl-F) for you, and begins searching when you type - as long as your focus is not in some sort of text input box or textarea.

I think FireFox's docking find toolbar in general is one of the best features of FireFox. Textbook usability - I hate it when the Find is a modal dialog that goes away, and you have to go back into the menu, or use a keyboard shortcut (different for every app) to find next/previous.

I hope software developers copy this, Eclipse for one.

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Firefox Tip: Begin Finding when you begin typing was first published on April 27, 2005.

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Comments

i love that feature, i appreciate it every time i use it. For some reason, I don't think it works on the mac though...although it's probably that i don't have the setting right.

by flashape on 04/27/2005 at 4:16:37 PM UTC

Thanks! this is one of those things that used to be this way by default back in the pre 1.0 days. I still use the ' to bring it up untill now. Thanks again!

by Ryan Guill on 04/27/2005 at 4:27:44 PM UTC