Incremental find

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Screenshot of performing "Find as you type" in Mozilla Firefox. "ency" was being typed and the first matched text was highlighted in green.

In computing, incremental find is a feature that can be found in various applications that involves searching for a text string. As the user types, the matched text is found and highlighted. This gives users faster feedback about matches, often allowing them to stop short of typing the entire word or phrase they were looking for.

Usually, in contrast to traditional find, no modal window is used. This has the advantage of not blocking the content being searched through, but the disadvantage of being a non-obvious interface mode.

The most common keyboard shortcuts for incremental find are ⌘F (like for traditional find), the GNU-style /, or Emacs-style C-s .

1 Critique
2 Variants
- 2.1 Searches for files and media
- 2.2 Searches for user interface elements
3 Specific applications
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Critique

Interface expert Jef Raskin was a strong advocate of incremental find. In his 2000 book The Humane Interface, he wrote, "From the point of view of interface engineering, the advantages of incremental searching are so numerous and the advantages of delimited searches so few that I can see almost no occasions when a delimited search would be preferred." This was followed by a footnote reading, "A search is either incremental or excremental."^[1]

[edit] Variants

This feature, or variations thereof, has also been referred to as search as you type, filter as you type (FAYT), incremental search, typeahead search, inline search, instant search, word wheeling, and other names as well.

[edit] Searches for files and media

This user interface method is also employed in varying contexts. For example, a user may encounter this feature while searching for files whose names match a string in an operating system's file explorer shell. The feature may also be used during searches for songs whose name or artist match a string in a media player.

[edit] Searches for user interface elements

Another variation is to filter through long lists of options or menu items that may appear within the user interface itself. Examples of this variation can be found in the about:config interface section of Mozilla Firefox version 2.0.0.14, and in the bundle editor section of TextMate 1.5.7. In most of aforementioned cases, typically a list of matches is generated as the search query is typed, and the list is progressively narrowed to match the filter text.