Code Editor: Inconsistent results between finding in CodeMirror vs browser

[wpress2010]

When in the Appearance/Editor, f'rinstance, when editing a child theme's CSS file, the Ctrl-F (Search) no longer works. SOMETIMES it will find a string IF that string is on the VISIBLE portion of the screen. It will NOT find that string in the file if the string is NOT visible.

Sometimes it will not find the string at all - visible or not.

A serious impeiment to the Editor!

[johnbillion]

I just noticed this too. The search (which overrides the built-in browser search) is unusable. It doesn't allow for moving between instances of search results.

[johnbillion]

Actually, navigating between results can be done with cmd+g but there's no visual indication of this, like there is with the browser's built-in search.

[melchoyce]

Are you getting any console errors? I'm able to search using the code editor's built in search without issue (though there isn't a way to move to the next result or back, but I don't think it ever had that?)

[wpress2010]

I am not sure what you are referring to here. The "built-in editor" apparently is only called when you click on the link in the stylesheet file when in the Editor - a new message above the editing area that says,

"Did you know?

There’s no need to change your CSS here — you can edit and live preview CSS changes in the built-in CSS editor."

Foolish message, as I AM editing the child theme's CSS file! This new "feature" is just some kind of "dumbing down" of the admin functions, IMHO.

Is there a way to invoke this "built-in CSS editor" in the actual CSS file? I personally think that making styling changes via the theme's "Additional CSS" Customize tab is BAD practice. That's what a child theme is for!

[dd32]

Who's owning this for 4.9.1?

Looking at the editor, I worked out that Cmd+f is search, Cmd+f, Enter then re-opens the search and advances on to the next result
I'd have not guessed that Cmd+g is the next search result (Cmd+shift+g is the previous).
​https://codemirror.net/doc/manual.html#addons has a bunch of search related things which might help, but I can't actually tell what if any of those addons are within the minified build we're using.

Sidenote: We're running version 5.29.1-alpha-ee20357 of codemirror, ​5.32.0 was released 2 days ago, and there's been 3 releases since it was commited.

[thrijith]

before search

[thrijith]

after search

[thrijith]

there is no ui to jump to next or previous "search term" but it highlights all the "search term" and displays it on the scroll bar. PFA

[dd32]

@thrijith Is the context of those screenshots a patch which was missed from being attached?

[thrijith]

@dd32 no it's highlighting the "search term" without any patch in 4.9 but there is no way to to jump from one result to another other than using Ctrl + g for next and Ctrl + Shift + g for previous as you mentioned in your comment.

[dd32]

Replying to thrijith:

@dd32 no it's highlighting the "search term" without any patch in 4.9 but there is no way to to jump from one result to another other than using Ctrl + g for next and Ctrl + Shift + g for previous as you mentioned in your comment.

Ah right okay, I don't get the scrollbar highlighting, perhaps because I'm on Chrome for Mac.

[wpress2010]

Oddly enough, the problem seems to have resolved itself, and now (at least in Firefox /Win 56.0.2) the search works as expected. Ctrl-F to open the Search box at the top left of the Editor screen, and then F3 to advance to next instance of search target.

When I initially reported the lack of expected Search behavior, Ctrl-F did NOT open the Search box.

[johnbillion]

The search behaviour actually varies depending on whether your cursor is focused in the code editor or not. If it is, it uses the code editor search functionality, if not the default browser functionality remains.

Punting due to lack of a patch.

[westonruter]

The only thing I can think of doing here is intercept any “Cmd-F” commands and route them into CodeMirror. This would mean, however, that a user would not be able to do a find to locate a file in the file list, which would be unfortunate. Maybe the solution here would be to show a notice when doing “Cmd-F” when not focused on CodeMirror to prompt the user to focus on CodeMirror to do a find of code.

CodeMirror only loads the current viewport into the DOM, so that is why the browser's find does not match results as it would in a textarea. This is for performance.

Code editor tickets we're keeping in the General component.

[sasiddiqui]

Usse alt+f for persistent search as browser instead of ctrl+f

[sasiddiqui]

To have persistent Search, moving to the next position on enter key you need to use alt+f instead ctrl+f.

Here are some keybindings which are used for search/replace functionality.

Ctrl-F / Cmd-F

Start searching

Ctrl-G / Cmd-G

Find next

Shift-Ctrl-G / Shift-Cmd-G

Find previous

Shift-Ctrl-F / Cmd-Option-F

Replace

Shift-Ctrl-R / Shift-Cmd-Option-F

Replace all

Alt-F

Persistent search (dialog doesn't autoclose, enter to find next, Shift-Enter to find previous)

Alt-G

Jump to line

[Desertsnowman]

This simply adds Ctrl-F and Cmd-F (keeping . both Mac and PC) bound to findPersistent as extra keys.

[Desertsnowman]

This patch also prevents taking over the browsers Ctrl/Cmd-F as it only works if the editor is selected. Might be good to keep the Alt-F as well for users who already expect that.

Also, the behaviour of findPersistent allows for pressing enter to jump to the next match as well as pressing Cmd/Ctrl-f cycles the matches as well.

[dd32]

Bumping to 4.9.3 due to 4.9.2s release

[Clorith]

The patch looks fine, some considerations from testing it out though:

We should grab some styles for the active search result, currently all search results, and the active one, get the same yellow color, making it impossible to distinguish which one you are currently observing as the active result, this is especially bothersome as you can't "find backwards" if you go too far.

Another is that the current implementation only works if the CodeMirror window has focus, this is not the default state, so if I pick a file to edit and then instantly hit ctrl/cmd+f to find what i need, I'll still get the browser search. It might be worth considering either auto-focusing the editor, or hijacking the search command on the editor pages only to provide a better user experience.

[SergeyBiryukov]

In my quick testing, having a persistent search on Ctrl/Cmd+F is indeed more intuitive than using Alt+F, which doesn't work for me on Windows.

Let's get 42586.patch​ in (but keep Alt+F just in case) and continue iterating in 4.9.4.

[SergeyBiryukov]

In 42625:

Code Editor: Add Ctrl/Cmd+F as aliases for persistent search for more intuitive behaviour.

Keep Alt+F as well for users who already expect that.

Props Desertsnowman.
See #42586.

[SergeyBiryukov]

In 42626:

Code Editor: Add Ctrl/Cmd+F as aliases for persistent search for more intuitive behaviour.

Keep Alt+F as well for users who already expect that.

Props Desertsnowman.
Merges [42625] to the 4.9 branch.
See #42586.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Let's address comment:22 in 4.9.4.

[dd32]

Bumping, 4.9.4 has been released.

[audrasjb]

Hello,

As far as I know, it still needs a patch to address comment:22

4.9.5 beta release is planned for next Tuesday so we'll need a patch in the next few days otherwise it will be punted to 4.9.6 (which is not that bad).

[audrasjb]

Bumping to 4.9.6 due to 4.9.5 beta release.

[desrosj]

Punting to 4.9.7 due to lack of progress.

[desrosj]

Moving all tickets in 4.9.7 to 4.9.8.

[pbiron]

4.9.8 beta release is scheduled for next Tues (July 17).

Any chance comment:22 will be addressed by then or should be punt to 4.9.9?

[pento]

This needs an owner for it to be milestoned.

[afercia]

Looking at what's left to do, see comment:22

I see codemirror uses a cm-searching CSS class to highlight all the matches but I couldn't find any CSS class used for the current "active" match so I'm not sure this can be done. Anyone have found a way to do it? Otherwise I'm afraid there's nothing we can do and it should be addressed upstream.

Another is that the current implementation only works if the CodeMirror window has focus, this is not the default state, so if I pick a file to edit and then instantly hit ctrl/cmd+f to find what i need, I'll still get the browser search. It might be worth considering either auto-focusing the editor, or hijacking the search command on the editor pages only to provide a better user experience.

I kindly disagree :)

• auto-focusing is an option when there's only one, very specific, task to complete and there are no other possible workflows (e.g. landing in a page or a modal with nothing else then a form to fill in). This is not the case in this page, where there are many possible workflows and auto-focusing the editor would be far from ideal for keyboard users
• native browser functionalities shouldn't be "hijacked" unless there's a really, really, good reason to do that. Making the Alt+F / Ctrl/Cmd+F search limited to the editor area would not allow to search in the rest of the page: as a used, I would like to search, for example, in the list of files in the sidebar (which can be pretty long) or in any other part of the page

@SergeyBiryukov @Clorith given the above, not sure this ticket should stay open :) thoughts?

[Clorith]

It seems, from a quick glance, that CodeMirror expects you to style selected text for this, as it appears to selected the "active" text.

I understand the disagreement with the find feature though, but I'd like to make a counter-argument here that the editing of files is the primary focus, and that the files list on the side isn't very search friendly if files are in directories (as they will be in many cases). It just felt "unnatural" that I can't just search to find what i need in the code editor right away without extra interactions, but I will admit that I have limited experience with these use cases, and will defer to your experience here.

[desrosj]

Let’s wrap this up in 5.3.

[audrasjb]

Given this ticket still needs some discussions, has no owner and still needs patch or decision, I'm moving it to Future release.
Also adding close keyword as it appears the ticket should probably be fixed upstream in Code mirror. Leaving it open for the moment so discussion could continue in the ticket.

Cheers,
Jb

[ironprogrammer]

Test Report (Regression)

The purpose of this test is to provide current context of the issue.

Environment

• Hardware: MacBook Pro Apple M1 Pro
• OS: macOS 12.6
• Browser: Safari 16.0, Google Chrome 107.0.5304.110
• Server: nginx/1.23.2
• PHP: 7.4.32
• WordPress: 6.2-alpha-54642-src
• Theme: twentytwentyone v1.7

Actual Results

• ✅ When using Cmd-F to search, pressing Return keeps the search box visible.
• ❌ When using Cmd-F to search, the current "focused" search result is not highlighted differently from other results. Pressing Return advances the code to the next result, but no special highlighting is applied. (See Figure 1.)

Additional Notes

• After a Cmd-F search, pressing ESC to exit the search box removes highlighting except for the "focused" result.
• Using Cmd-G (and Shift-Cmd-G) instead of Cmd-F clearly shows the "focused" result in a different color.

Supplemental Artifacts

Figure 1: Patch 42586.patch applied.

Figure 2: Patch reverted.

[ironprogrammer]

Following up on this report. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far!

To summarize for historical context:

• The original report was that Ctrl-F did not work as expected, but was later confirmed as working again.
• Subsequently, r42625 added support to press Return/Enter after a Ctrl-F search to advance to the next result, while leaving the search box visible.
• However, the Ctrl/Cmd-F key modifiers introduced in r42625 appear to cause the loss of "focused" search result highlighting described in comment:22. (See comment:50.)
• Discussion also followed whether the code editor should hijack the browser's default Ctrl/Cmd-F functionality.
• It's worth clarifying that since its adoption to core, CodeMirror's ​default mappings define "Find" as Ctrl/Cmd-F, "Find Next" as Ctrl/Cmd-G, and "Find Previous" as Shift-Ctrl/Cmd-G.

Next Steps

Because r42625 introduced the "focused" highlight regression in comment:22, and this update has been around several years (I don't think we can revert at this point), this ticket should remain open until the regression has been addressed. So I'm removing the close keyword, and marking for changes-requested.

Also, because this ticket has been reviewed repeatedly in ​#accessibility, and the high priority is questioned each time, I've marked as normal.

Optional Follow-Ups

• If anyone feels strongly that the browser's default Find key mappings should be overridden by the code editor, this should be explored in a new ticket.
• The CodeMirror version used in core is ​v5.29.1-alpha-ee20357, and hasn't been updated in some time. CodeMirror 5 is currently ​v5.65.9 (and completely overhauled in ​version 6).