[Forrest]

I guess it depends on what you usually search for. Personally, I prefer exact phrase. Perhaps it's because I send a lot of time in a text editor and have adapted my search style to better suit exact phrase.

For example, if I search for "foo.bar" I want it to find "foo.bar" not "foo bar" or "foo. Bar"

One of the big reasons I use OW is to debug web sites. Often I work on sites that are dynamic and a bug in the code could reside in any number of files. So I view source in OW, edit and redisplay. Then I can debug it as a whole rather than each individual piece. I find the bug then fix the appropriate file. I'll use find & replace as well.