Feature Request: Support find in browse mode

[cary-rowen]

Currently NVDA's find function relies on system focus,
press nvda+7 “focus moves navigate object on”, every time you find the review cursor will follow the system focus.
Can we have a feature to find only in browse mode without moving the system cursor.

[marlon-sousa]

Hello,

This is currently a tiny enhancement on NVDA's find functionality itself.

Trying to change the whole functionality may be too much for an addom layer, but I am not sure at this time. Can you give me a practical example on how this should work from the point of view of an user?

[cary-rowen]

Hi @marlon-sousa

Yes, I admit it can be a challenge for addon.

Background introduction:

1. I am editing an excel sheet, but I need to find specific data from another document or web page to fill out the sheet.
2. I use document review mode, e.g. numpad7, 9, This way I don't need to leave the current excel window, since filling the sheet only requires system focus moving.
3. However, the data I need is not continuous, they are scattered in different places in the document or web page, and there are specific markers around these specific data that can be used to find and locate.

My idea is as follows

Improve the existing ctrl+nvda+F dialog:
- If "nvda+7: focus moves navigator object off" and document review is working, the dialog's search is limited to the virtual document, Otherwise follow existing behavior

• So the find dialog works global, not just for virtual documents.

Grateful
Cary

[marlon-sousa]

Hello Cary,

The ctrl + nvda + f dialog doesn't even work outside of virtual documents.

In your example, we would need to decide what is the find dialog supposed to do outside of virtual documents before extending it to search the whole window hierarchy structure for some text.

We would also need to define what to do once text is found, because text in the window hierarchy might be not focusable for example. If you are in excel and we do find some text, then what should we do? Perhaps puting the navigation object on that text? Perhaps copy the selected text to the clipboard?

Then, the next question is: what if I am filling a form on a website and need to find information in other windows? Then should the find dialog work in the document or should our new version of finding take action?

The way it is, it seems to me that this shouldn't be coupled to the find dialog, it should be another new, specific dialog, which would search for text in all windows hierarchy and if text is found do something with it.

The next question which comes is this: what would be the performance of this new feature, having to search on all the hierarchy?

How deep should it search, taking in consideration that navigation object requires you to "expand objects" (e.e cnvda key plus numpad 2) to further inspect nodes in the tree?

Should we scope the search to the current object navigation and its sub objects, so that the search gets smaller and you can, for example, focus the main component you want to search and press nvda + f3 (only ilustrative command here) and find quickly something you need to find on a history bases?

This would be a very rich feature of NVDA, and it has potential to land in the main code. If you can help me to better design it here, we might try to build it into another dialog coded on this addon and, some day, try yet another time to make it land on NVDA main code.