pdf xchange not keyboard friendly - find dialog box

[sow]

When hitting control-F to do a find there is no keystroke one can use to escape out of the find box to go back to the document. This forces the user to use the mouse. To those that use the keyboard where possible, this is a huge problem! A look at many common programs which provide a find box (IE, Word, Firefox, etc.), you will see a simple 'esc' gets the user back to the document to use arrow, page up/down, etc.

Thanks!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Yes, this one is hard to find a solution for. The following works, but its not perfect, nor as easy as using Esc would be:

1. Right-click on any toolbar to show the customise dialogue
2. Open the View, Toolbars submenu and right-click on the Find toolbar to edit its properties
3. Assign the shortcut "Ctrl Al f" to it
4. Move the Find toolbar so that it is floating (this step is optional)
5. Close the customise dialogue

Now Ctrl Alt f will show/hide the find toolbar, and Ctrl F will show the find toolbar and focus the find text field. You cannot use "f" or "shift F" because the shortcut as they will type text when the toolbar is displayed. Alt F won't work either because that will pull down the File menu.

In some situations, using Ctrl Alt F to hide the floating find toolbar will hide the application behind another one, which is rather disconcerting, but this custom setup does get around the problem of using only the keyboard for finding text.

[sow]

Thanks for the tip. I did this and it works as you laid out. I also saw an instance in my testing of it bringing up background windows. Still a small price to pay to have a workaround!

Now, hopefully the developers can get to fixing this oversight.

Thanks again!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Now, hopefully the developers can get to fixing this oversight.

Yes, hopefully. I thought for a moment there that you said:

Now, hopefully the developers can get to fixing this overnight.

[Vasyl - PDF-XChange]

Hi, sow.

We can improve the behavior of the find-box (cancel focus by "esc" key).

Thanks.

Best
Regards.