Ctrl+F (Search/Find) window turns up transparent, do you get that too?

[Mischa Megens]

When I type ctrl+F as a shortcut for Search/Find…, the ‘Find’ window opens as expected, but every so often (a chance of about 1 in 10), the window turns up transparent, and when I continue typing, I type into the document (instead of into the ‘Find what:’ text box). It is a minor nuisance.
Does anyone else experience this too?
(For me it is new, it only started happening a few months ago; it used to work fine every time.)

[mkupper]

@Mischa-Megens I have never experienced what you described but also am uncertain I fully understand what you wrote.

The behavior you are describing seems like that sometimes the Find window is not getting the focus or that the focus quickly changes from the Find window back to the main document. For example, if I do Ctrl+F to bring up the Find window then the Find window has focus and when I use the keyboard the keystrokes go to the Find window. If I then use the mouse to click on the document then the document gets focus though the Find Window is still visible and my keystrokes go to the document.

Assuming you use Ctrl+F to bring up the Find window then I don’t think there is any keyboard action that you can do that would cause the focus to change to the document other than Esc to close the Find window. Thus my guess is that your machine thinks the mouse is getting clicked. Do you have one of those touch-pad mouse things in front of the keyboard?

When you use Ctrl+F to bring up the Find window what are your Transparency settings in the lower-right corner of the box? I don’t think there is anything in those settings that would affect changing or controlling the focus. The Transparency settings control what the Find window looks like when you change the focus using the mouse and/or what it looks like when the Find window itself has focus.

You had mentioned “but every so often (a chance of about 1 in 10), the window turns up transparent.” That’s why I asked about the transparency settings. Is your Find window normally transparent or is it normally solid and randomly when you invoke it then it’s transparent?

[Mischa Megens]

@mkupper said in Ctrl+F (Search/Find) window turns up transparent, do you get that too?:

@Mischa-Megens I have never experienced what you described but also am uncertain I fully understand what you wrote.

The behavior you are describing seems like that sometimes the Find window is not getting the focus or that the focus quickly changes from the Find window back to the main document.
For example, if I do Ctrl+F to bring up the Find window then the Find window has focus and when I use the keyboard the keystrokes go to the Find window. If I then use the mouse to click on the document then the document gets focus though the Find Window is still visible and my keystrokes go to the document.

Exactly, that is what it looks like.

Assuming you use Ctrl+F to bring up the Find window then I don’t think there is any keyboard action that you can do that would cause the focus to change to the document other than Esc to close the Find window. Thus my guess is that your machine thinks the mouse is getting clicked. Do you have one of those touch-pad mouse things in front of the keyboard?

I do. I thought I wasn’t touching it. But perhaps it thinks it it being touched, that would be consistent with the observations :)

When you use Ctrl+F to bring up the Find window what are your Transparency settings in the lower-right corner of the box?

Transparency has a checkmark, and ‘On losing focus’ is selected.

You had mentioned “but every so often (a chance of about 1 in 10), the window turns up transparent.” That’s why I asked about the transparency settings. Is your Find window normally transparent or is it normally solid and randomly when you invoke it then it’s transparent?

Normally, the find window is not transparent, only when it loses focus it becomes transparent. It is entirely consistent with the settings in the lower-right corner. The problem is more succinctly summarized as the Find window loses focus.

Perhaps it can indeed be blamed on that touchpad… Let me see if I can disable it.

[Mischa Megens]

@mkupper Disabling the touchpad fixed it :)
Apologies for the red herring… :(