Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 20:48:11 -0500 From: Josh DiMauro jdimauro@gmail.com
That's pretty much it... but the advantage is less the shorter find string, and more the ability to fine tune by either narrowing or widening the search with a couple keystrokes, without having to reopen a dialog box. The difference is subtle, but (I feel) important.
Incremental search seems to be one of those things that makes a subtle difference in reducing resistance to use. It's not so much that I need it to do all my searching. It's more that, when I don't have it available, I search less, and that makes me less efficient.
Incremental search changes the way you do searching. Using Firefox or Mozilla, on a web page I can just type '/' and then the thing I'm looking for. cmd-f and filling in a dialog box is requires much more cognitive effort because of the two context switches required (into the dialog box and back). Many times I've wanted to type '/something' and then realized I needed to do cmd-f etc... and decided just to page-up or page-down instead. May I suggest cmd-/ for incremental search?
Carl