[whatwg] Specification of window.find()

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Mon May 2 16:42:58 PDT 2011


On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Benjamin Poulain wrote:
> On 01/06/2011 10:53 PM, ext Ian Hickson wrote:
> > On Wed, 27 Oct 2010, benjamin.poulain at nokia.com wrote:
> > > I would like to suggest a change for the main HTML 5 specification:
> > > http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/
> > > 
> > > The problem I have is with the Window object specification
> > > (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-window-object ).
> > > It does not mention the method find() which can be found on most engines
> > > (e.g.: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.find ).
> > 
> > It looks like IE doesn't implement this, so it's probably not strictly
> > required for compat with the Web.
> > 
> > What are the use cases for this feature?
> 
> I do not know the original use case but I can think of a few:
> -on mobile devices which have a find dialog but no user interface to access
> it, make the find dialog appear

Are there pages that do this today? Or indeed any UAs that have a find 
dialog but no UI to access it?


> -on mobile devices which do not have a find dialog, add one for you 
> document if pertinent

You can add a custom find feature without window.find(), you just have to 
implement it manually.


> -add search feature in a frame. Searching between frames with the 
> browser builtin dialog is usually not doing was user expect

Are there pages that do this?


> On IE, users usually emulate the feature with TextRange 
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms535872%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Do you have any examples of pages doing this? It would be useful to study 
how pages use this API; maybe we can do something better.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


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