How to search inside a long thread?

WieWaldi

Hi, after some time with this forum, some things have developed and threads gotten longer.
Now, I have an issue with long threads, threads with 50 posts and more.
It is easy to navigate to the 1st post of the thread and to the last post, because there is a "button". But all the posts in between are buried in darkness. I can scroll through the threads, but the forum does then a kind of "unloading" of the already displayed content, so I can only see a small window of only 25 to 30 posts. And this is my problem:
Normally I search with Ctrl+F in my browser, but if this window doesn't show the thread with the search text, I cannot find it.
This means I have to scroll through and re-check with Ctrl+F again and again if the search-text can be found. And this is really annoying because I don't know when this window of visible threads moves. And if there are multiple search hits, it sends me always back to the last one, and then I must re-scroll again and hope to scroll a little bit further than last time, but also not too far.
By now, this is the only disadvantage of this forum software compared to the other one.

Anybody else having the same issue?
And how did you overcome it?

JB_PT

I am not having an issue with CTRL-F; seems to work as expected. If I have a long thread open and search for a keyword with 8 hits for example, I can hit the up/down keys and it takes me to the hits within the thread like normal. Am I misunderstanding your problem?

The forum's search feature doesn't work like I'd expect though. It won't search for fragments...like "neuro" brings up nothing. I have to type the full word "neuroscience."

WieWaldi

JB_PT Yes, I guess you missed the point. Let's make a quick test. Please find the text "I'm past being a beginner" and tell me in which post it exists in this thread: https://forum.pianotell.com/d/852-the-sight-reading-thread
If you try it, you will understand my problem.

JB_PT

WieWaldi Well...I searched for the word 'beginner' and I got 4 hits. The closest phrase to what you quoted is "I’m not a beginner." So either you set me up, or I've just experienced your point. 😄

WieWaldi

JB_PT look close to post #60 and search again 🙂

navindra

This is some awesome feedback, thanks for pointing out these rough edges. I have some potential leads on this.

It looks like there is an extension that will allow searching by keyword within discussions.

There is a Google trick you can use as well:

https://google.com/search?q=album+site:forum.pianotell.com

If Google search just works better, I could look into adding an alternative search box on the site... similar to what Piano World does.

navindra

Here you go. It's not perfect but it's definitely better!

Now you can search discussions — try Control-F or Control-Shift-F as well:

It finds keywords not phrases, but that still allows you to narrow down the search quite a bit:

You can also filter searches by author:

Finally you can choose to view all the replies by one person to the thread:

BartK

That's awsome Navindra! 😀 I was having the same problem as WieWaldi but thought it was because of my mobile browser.

navindra

BartK Here's an enhancement that should help with discoverability on mobile as well:

WieWaldi

Thanks @navindra for extending the forum.

But it is important to know what this search finds, and what not.
If your search word is "beginner" it finds only the whole word (case insensitive).
For instance "Beginner", "BEGINNER" or "beginner" would be found.
But not "beginners".

Another thing to know:
If you look for "sight reading", it searches all "sight" and "reading" words, but not the term "sight[_blank]reading".
On the contrary "sight-reading" is considered as one single word, and it searches all occourences, when both words are connected by a hyphen.

3rd: finding: if you search for the term "beginner", it won't find the text inside member-signatures, as currently in mine.