Bug 19972 – Feature Request: Provide more robust searching tools in Cmd-F search bar (match case, regular expressions, in selection)

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: INVALID
• Component: New Bugs

[Dylan]

It would be useful if there was a way to search case-sensitively when using the Command-F search-bar thing. A simple checkbox labeled "Match Case" to the left of the previous/next searches to turn this feature on/off be the easiest way to toggle the feature. 

A slightly less trivial enhancement would be searching for regular expressions as well (which could prove useful when looking at diffs of patches in the browser, for example), although that could confuse the average user. 

Finally, the ability to search only within selected text (or perhaps, only the text currently in the viewport - that is, search without scrolling) would help when searching on very long pages, and the ability to only search within (and/or to explicitly exclude) editable areas (be they text areas/fields, or content-editable elements) would help on forms.





Other browsers: Firefox (at least, FF3, I did not test 2) provides the "Match Case" option. I have not looked in any other browsers. 

Firefox also automatically puts the currently selected text (or at least, some of it if there is a very long selection) into the search field when Cmd-F is pressed. This is useful (although it would probably not play nice with "search within selection"). 



I am not entirely sure if these should all be one request or multiple, but since they are all essentially asking for more functionality in the search bar, I put them together as one. I can split them up if desired.

[Mark Rowe (bdash)]

The search banner is part of Safari rather than in WebKit.  Enhancement requests for Safari should be filed at <http://bugreport.apple.com/>.  This bug will be closed as INVALID per our policy for handling bugs outside of WebKit.