F3/Shift-F3 as aliases for Find Next/Previous while find dialog is active

Steven Bush

When the editor window is active, the user can press F3 to cycle to the next find result or Shift-F3 to cycle to the previous result. However, if the find window is currently active, F3/Shift-F3 do not work and instead “enter”/Shift-“Enter” perform the same action. I’d suggest adding the F3/Shift-F3 keyboard shortcuts to the Find dialog as aliases for Enter/Shift-Enter

As an example of this:

Within a document launch the find dialog (Ctrl-F)
Type in some text to search that appears multiple times within the text
Press Enter. The text is found
Press Enter or Shift-Enter. The next or previous text is found
Now press F3 or Shift-F3: nothing happens
click on the document window (depending on your dialog settings, the find dialog becomes inactive and somewhat transparent)
Now press F3 or Shift-F3: The next or previous text is found

It would be nice if the Find Next/Previous shortcut were consistent between both states.

Scott Sumner

@Steven-Bush

Well, one problem with this idea is that F3 and Shift-F3 are not “hard keys” but are soft-remappable via the Shortcut Mapper. For those that don’t keep F3 and Shift-F3 mapped as default, having them tied this way in the Find family of windows isn’t helpful.

It is not a bad idea, in general, but it opens the door to the expectation that other editing functions (and their keymappings) work on the Find what and Replace with fields, etc. and this is just not the case. The editor window is Scintilla-based with custom keymap capability, and the Find window controls are pretty much basic Win32 common controls (with their inherent limitations).

Alan Kilborn

Notepad++ 8.6.6 will allow F3 and Shift+F3 to work while the Find or Replace windows have input focus.
See point #6 here: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/25742/notepad-v8-6-6-release-candidate