Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
The standard OS X find dialog is great for textual find & replace operations on text. It's not very useful for searching lists of items -- that's better served by filtering. Applications that are less text-dependent, and especially programs that are lists or catalogs of large quantities of items, are better off filtering, rather than searching. Many applications, including a number of Apple's mainstay apps, eschew the Find/Replace dialog entirely, or limit its use to certain situations.*
OmniFocus is at heart a catalog/list program and has more in common with iCal than TextEdit. There are very few times I would ever want to do a mass find/replace operation in OmniFocus.** If all I want to do is find items, filtering is much more useful.
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I agree, but that is beside the point. I'm simply trying to say that, for better or worse, the convention in Mac OS X seems to be Command-Option-F for moving focus to the toolbar search field, and Command-F to invoke the search/replace dialog. As you point out, some apps have customized behavior, but I think they're the exception rather than the rule.
And even if we can't agree that Command-Option-F is the standard shortcut for the toolbar search field, the key combination is at least commonly used in many, many apps. For example, I see Apple's Dictionary app works this way too.
So using those same shortcuts in OmniFocus should not be a big surprise or be particularly confusing for most users familiar with other OS X software. It feels natural to me.
That being said, I do agree that OmniFocus is more of "list" program and that most users are probably going to do a lot more filtering on rows than text-based searching/replace (although the search/replace dialog still has its place and should
not be removed). So maybe OmniFocus should deviate from the convention, like iCal, and use Command-F for the toolbar search fields. But I'm not convinced there's any serious design flaw here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
The Finder (in Leopard at least) switches to/opens a search-style window and puts the cursor in the toolbar search field.
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But the Finder also responds to Command-Option-F to place the cursor in the toolbar search field without entering any special modes, leaving the window in it's current state. So at best, this one's a draw. :) Besides, a text-based search/replace dialog doesn't make much sense in that context.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
Apple's PIM apps, iCal and Address Book, both go straight to a filter box on a CMD+F.
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Like the Finder, Address Book also places the cursor in the toolbar search field with Command-Option-F. So it's another draw. And, like the Finder, a text-based search/replace dialog doesn't make much sense in that context.
iCal, I grant you, seems to be an exception. If there's no use for a text-based search/replace dialog, I think it makes better sense to have both Command-F and Command-Option-F position the cursor in the toolbar search field (like Address Book and Finder).
OmniFocus, however, requires both the a search/replace dialog and the toolbar search field, so maybe iCal isn't a good comparison.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
Safari falls somewhere inbetween with its own weird little drop down that sort-of-filters (highlights) and also finds/find-nexts.
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But I disagree! That "weird little drop down" is just a reformatted text-based search/replace dialog (minus the replace capabilities since content is read-only), and it's invoked with Command-F. And Safari supports the standard convention of using Command-option-F for the toolbar search field
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
iTunes, frustratingly enough, doesn't do a darn thing on a CMD+F, but does go to the toolbar search on a CMD+opt+F.
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Standard behavior. No practical need for a text-based search/replace dialog. In this case, Apple should probably make both shortcuts place the cursor in the toolbar search field, just like Finder and Address Book.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
iPhoto goes straight to the filter-search, as the text-based find/replace would be entirely useless.
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Yeah, this one certainly supports your claim. It seems they use Command-Option-F to go into fullscreen editing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
Preview probably has the best Find method of any application. CMD+F filters the document to pages containing the search term, but ALSO highlights and CMD+G's through every instance of the term within the document.
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I really like Preview's search behavior - very well done. But I'll also point out that, like Finder and Address Book, Command-Option-F also places the cursor in the toolbar search field. Apple did the right thing in allowing either shortcut to work since there was no need for a traditional search/replace dialog window.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
And other apps (Yummy Soup, for example) only enable the textual find/replace when you're in a rich text editing mode/area.
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OmniFocus works differently here, though, because you can do textual search/replace across multiple row objects (database items). So it wouldn't make much sense to have it only enabled when in text editing mode.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik
The only place there's any large amounts of text is in the notes area. These notes may be long, but they're generally clippings/references from other programs, and are not usually edited in any substantial fashion...
If you're spending your time formatting and perfecting notes, you probably aren't the target audience for a super-charged task management program like OmniFocus!
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I think that depends on what kinds of tasks you're managing in OmniFocus. For me, a big part of my usage is tracking bug fixes for my job. In those cases, I often write up several paragraphs in the notes field describing what happened so I can reference them later. Sometimes I even paste in snippets of code.
So for me, search and replace is very handy. And rich text formatting is not just to make things look pretty; it improves legibility by allowing me to make bold headings and display code in a fixed-width font, etc.
-Dennis