Incremental find

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Screenshot of performing "Find as you type" in Mozilla Firefox. "ency" was being typed and the first matched text was highlighted in green.
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, or inline find/progressive find, is a feature that can be found in various applications that involves the searching of text string. Usually, in contrast to traditional find, no modal window is used. A keyboard shortcut, usually "/", is assigned to invoke the find function.

As the user types, the matched text is found (and usually highlighted). It can also find next/previous matched text. This is more robust than traditional find as finding is done immediately when typing starts. Also, it is better in terms of usability as no modal window is used. In the case of modal find, the user may need to move the modal window around, as it can block the part of the screen which contains the matched text.

Non-modal incremental find is not only found in most modern web browsers like Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Konqueror, but also in Apple Computer's iTunes & Spotlight (which searches the entire computer), Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows Media Player and Windows Live Messenger, and many text applications like Emacs, Archy, Vim, NetBeans IDE, less and Eclipse. In Mozilla jargon, it is coined as Find As You Type (FAYT). Incremental find was first introduced in Winamp on February 14, 2000 with version 2.60.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.