How do I do a proper 'find'?

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1

Anywhere else on the Internet, when I want to find a word on a page and click Control+F, I get the number of the word or phrase found in the upper-right corner of my browser, the page background dims, and the word or phrase I want to find is highlighted. Here, when I do a Control-F, I go to a new page with links to the posts in a thread where the word or phrase appears in the thread.

Since seeing the location of the object of my Find in the thread is often useful, is there a way to do a proper Find instead of getting text balloons with links?

2

So I just tested this, and in my browser (Chrome, on a desktop, Windows somethingorother) I get the little box at the op right, and the word I selected is highlighted in orange, with yellow for the next instances.

3

Huh. I just tried it on this page, and I got a regular Find (instead of what I described in the OP, which was more like a Search).

4

I just went to another thread. I clicked Control+F and typed ‘mustang’. This is the result:

[Album] imgur.com

As you can see, the Find did turn into a Search. What I want to do is Find something on a page, not search for its occurrences in posts.

ETA: When I Control+F on this page, I get the standard Safari Find box. When I do the same in the other thread, I get a ‘Search this topic’ box.

5

Same for me. I wonder if it’s because this page isn’t long enough for infinite scrolling to kick in. Obviously, once that happens, the standard ctl-F will only be able to search the part of the page that’s currently displayed.

6

In firefox, pressing ctrl+f a second time will bring up the normal search box.

But it’s useless because of the way infinite scroll works. It’ll only search whatever portion is in the ‘buffer’ in either direction.

7

While viewing THIS thread, Ctrl-F works the way it works in any browser. But when viewing the “CAPTION CONTEST” thread, Ctrl-F gives me the “Search this thread” function (a boards.straightdope.com function). I’m using Chrome.

Why is it different? Is it because one is in my watch list and the other isn’t? It’s annoying.

8

Aha! I scrolled to the top of the F4U thread, then hit Control+F in Safari. It worked.

Thank you!

9

Or use the menu:

Yes, the “search this thread” will hijack Control-F (or ⌘ - F) depending on the context of your cursor, but the menu command will still work.

10

I’ve mentioned this in other threads about this and , while I don’t know if it is device or browser or Discourse theme, the control +Find searches the entire thread. Doesn’t matter if it’s 10 posts or 1000 posts it will search all of them. They are listed by post number, lowest to highest, in bold and larger text. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a search like Johnny_LA’s unless it is a whole board search.

I mostly use a Windows 10 PC, Chrome browser and Discourse Classic theme.

11

If the topic is long enough, only the visible fragment is loaded in the browser at any given time, so in-browser search is only offered on short topics where it can potentially make sense e.g. the topic is so short that it’s all loaded in browser memory and visible at once.

As indicated in previous replies you can press ctrl+f twice to override, but you’ll run into the same issue. For example, if the topic is 3,000 posts, not all 3k posts are loaded in browser memory at once, just the visible portion.

12

Sounds like a good reason not to use infinite scroll.

13

Hold on, can it be disabled?

14

With a 25-page thread, how do you know which page to load so that your Ctrl-F will work?

15

This is not how it works for me. I went to this thread, which has 3000+ posts and did a topic search for Mustang, figuring that would have to show up somewhere in the thread. It returns a list of posts from #57 to post #2718. At the time I did the search only post #1 was visible in my browser and I had never opened the thread before.

16

Discourse search or ordinary browser search? Discourse search will search the whole thread (if you tick the ‘search this topic’ box), browser search only searches the part that’s currently loaded.

17

Ah, ok. I use the Discourse search. Do people not like that for some reason? It returns the same results as a CTRL +F , only bolded instead of highlighted.

Apparently I’m misunderstanding the whole question.

18

Who knew? I never even heard of Discourse until the board switched to it. I don’t think I ever did the multiple click thing (going to a drop down menu and choosing Find), and have always used Control+F.

19

Another protip, try using the up and down arrows after searching:

/, type search term (wait for real time results), ↓ or ↑ to what you want, then enter

The full page advanced search doesn’t quite work this way, you’ll need to press tab a ton of times, but it is handy for the pop-up quick search.

(And as always press ? to see a full list of keyboard shortcuts, if you are on a keyboard capable device.)

20

I did that twice – searched that thread for “Mustang”, once using the magnifying glass and once using Ctrl-F. Both times I got the same results mordecaiB did.