Re: Browser search API

On Mon, 02 Dec 2013 11:42:30 -0000, Mounir Lamouri <mounir@lamouri.fr>  
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am not sure that telling the webpage what the user is currently trying
> to search is a great idea. However, if a webpage wants its own "find in
> page" UI I guess a simple solution would be to do something similar to
> the Forms Validation UI: a 'findinpage' event could be fired on the
> document when the user initiates a find in page and the page would be
> able to call .preventDefault() on the event in order to show its own UI.
>
> It could look like:
> window.document.addEventListener('findinpage', function(e) {
>   e.preventDefault();
>   var find = createFindInPageUI();
>   find.focus();
> });

Would that work with OS X's Find Pasteboard?

In OS X I can press Cmd+E in any application to choose selected text as  
the search keyword and Cmd+G in any other application to search for that  
text. This allows me to search pages in browser without ever invoking  
"find in page" explicitly in the browser.

I suggest having non-cancellable event that merely informs the page what  
user is searching for. The event could be populated from any UI, e.g.  
typical find-in-page dialog/toolbar, from search pasteboard or voice  
command.

Then pages like Google Docs could do:

window.document.addEventListener('find', function(event) {
 editedDocument.showPagesContaining(event.findInPageQueryAsRegEx);
});

I'm not sure if there needs to be a way for the page to respond when it's  
ready — it might be enough if browsers just react to dynamic DOM changes.


Otherwise I'm afraid that sites will start hijacking browser's  
find-in-page UI to provide their "enhanced" version that doesn't match  
platform's conventions and lacks functionality.

-- 
regards, Kornel

Received on Friday, 6 December 2013 01:49:55 UTC