Pretty HTML Editor - Ctrl F Won't Work

0 Likes
(10)

In exploring the "Pretty" HTML Editor, I have found that using Ctrl-F to find elements on a page does not work properly. This slows down use of an editor that has visual benefits when designing pages.

I have a test page I've been using to test something I was working on to get the look right. The page has several different versions of a common list, resulting in 35 individual list elements. I use Ctrl-F a lot to look for specific things when editing to more quickly make specific edits. When I do a search for <li on the Raw Editor, there are 35 instances on the page. If I switch to the Pretty Editor, it only finds 13. It seems to focus only on the elements visible on the page, plus a few extra (the extras almost match what would be seen if you hit Page Down once). On normal pages, where I might have specific marker text to search for, Ctrl-F won't find it because it is too far down the page. 

That the ability to search in the Pretty Editor is so drastically hindered makes using the it a bit more cumbersome. Hopefully, this is due to an error that can be corrected.

EDIT: I had tried turning off extensions in Chrome. That does not fix the Ctrl-F issue for me. Also, switching to Incognito mode did not correct the issue with Ctrl-F.

EDIT 2: Support Case Number 07378535

33 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open

@JeffCampbell 

Thanks for sharing this. We've moved the idea forward for further discussion. Could you confirm that you've already reported this to Canvas Support, and if you have, would you provide the case number for the support interaction?

JeffCampbell
Community Contributor

@Stef_retired 

This was not reported to Canvas Support. I had not thought about it being a bug, more a feature request. I can submit it that way if you feel it should be.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@JeffCampbell It may not be a bug, but it would be good to get the eyes of Canvas Support on it so that we cover all the bases. Please initiate a case if you have time, and keep us updated here on the outcome. Thanks!

JeffCampbell
Community Contributor

@Stef_retired Done. I updated the post.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@JeffCampbell Thank you, Jeff. I can confirm that I was able to replicate what you've described, so I'm looking forward to hearing what support discovers.

JeffCampbell
Community Contributor

@Stef_retired There are some people in another post also talking about seeing the same issue: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Question-Forum/Keyboard-Shortcuts-in-the-Pretty-HTML-Editor/td-p/...

JeffCampbell
Community Contributor

Support has responded that they are observing the same thing on their end so they are escalating the issue.

jsimon3
Community Participant

cmd + f works is this a windows issue?

KOliveras
Community Participant

@JeffCampbell Thanks for the updates and for cross-linking the two posts.  It's much appreciated.  

dlopeztassara
Community Member

Hi. Just to remark what I said in the another post: I have also experienced the CTRL + F issue using the Pretty HTML Editor. This is very frustrating because in our institution we use this shortcut a lot as we create the pages. Anyway, Ctrl + F works fine in the Raw Editor. So, we are using Raw Editor despite the Pretty Editor looks, actually, prettier. I hope the Support Team can fix this issue in the next release.

Thanks in advance.

instructionalt3
Community Explorer

This is a wonderful idea!!  We submitted a Support Ticket for this issue, and this was their response:

"After looking into it and talking with L2s, they said that this is up to Chrome and Firefox since the Ctrl-F is their feature and for some reason it's not showing all the possible options in the rendered pretty HTML vs a text field. We are unable to update this because the search feature is inside the web browser itself. We recommend switching to the raw format if you're going to search for something and then switch back to the pretty HTML to edit on it if you're needing to search through it."

If Canvas is unable to do anything about the Ctrl-F feature, then it would be great if they could create their own search function within the Pretty HTML Editor. 

JeffCampbell
Community Contributor

I also received such an email yesterday morning. It seems a rather unhelpful response and focused more on how it is someone else's issue. This is not happening in the RAW editor. which would imply that it has something to do with how Canvas's Pretty Editor interacts with browsers. That would make it a Canvas issue, not a browser issue. I also added that the Pretty Editor seems to autoscroll to the top of the editor EVERY TIME I navigate away from it, including merely going to another browser tab.

Either way, I would hope that Canvas would expect it's product to be usable as intended regardless of the browser being used.

brightenqt
Community Member

Can someone confirm this? The Pretty HTML Editor does allow searching, however, it is limited to the lines of HTML currently being viewed. So perhaps if the visibility of the whole editor can be viewed by the browser, this could solve the bug.

JeffCampbell
Community Contributor

@brightenqt Before posting, I noticed the same thing. When testing, I found it seems to only go as far as about one press of Page Down (in my OP, I noted that there were 35 instances of what I was searching for, but only the first 13 showed up when I did CTRL-F in the Pretty Editor). When I put in the support ticket, a Level 1 tech said they were able to recreate the problem on their own computer, so they escalated it to a Level 2 tech. The level 2 tech is where I got the response that it is my browser, not Canvas, that is the problem. 

rdictor
Community Participant

I had also reached out to support about this issue, case #07375314. The issue renders the pretty HTML editor practically useless.

hechla
Community Participant

I also noticed that ctrl+f (cmd+f) don't search the entirety of the RCE when in Pretty HTML mode. It does search the whole browser window, including the visible part of the RCE window. 

jnc
Community Explorer

As with many of you I've had the same experience. Put in support requests, received a couple of non-responses - including the one below which once again blames the browser notwithstanding the fact that it works just fine in RAW. 

"Thank you for the reply back to us. I'm sorry that the search function in Chrome and Firefox don't support searching within HTML elements. When you search for this within the page and it shows some results, that is because the HTML has been rendered for what is actively being displayed on pages. In order to implement a way to search through the HTML in the Pretty HTML Editor, it would require a new feature implemented that specifically searches through the HTML of the page. Since you already have the feature request already created, https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Pretty-HTML-Editor-Ctrl-F-Won-t-Work/idi-p/447... then you may be able to add your comments on this to that request to show more support for this to be developed quicker."

Other shortcuts also fail to work for me in Pretty in the way they do RAW (Ctrl+V for example working as 'page down' instead of paste). Suggested issue identified in other thread was it was an issue with touch screen computers, as Ctrl+V seemed to work ok in non-touch-screens.  

I'll just keep using RAW (now with the extra step of choosing RAW after defaulting to Pretty) as it seems they are not interested in fixing it or are not able to fix it (I really want to love Pretty ... it's most useful on long pages with plenty of code but they are precisely the pages on which it is most unusable given the absence of effective search)

JeffCampbell
Community Contributor

@jnc This is the answer I got this week:

Thank you for your response. I reached out to a few team members and while we do understand the frustration with this behavior, unfortunately it isn't something that we have the ability to fix at the moment. 

Our Engineering team reviews the feature ideas regularly and the community site will be updated if anything changes in regards to this behavior. I do apologize for any inconvenience caused. Please let me know if you have any additional questions

Which also seems to show a difference of opinion. I am being told they do not have the ability to fix that right now. You are being told that requires an added feature, which implies they do have the ability to generate a solution, they just don't want to unless there is enough support for it.

Quite frankly, I find two points of frustration. First, that on multiple occasions the issue has been blamed on the browser, with the implication that it is not an issue with Canvas. In one of my emails, I pointed out that it seems to be a browser issue that ONLY affects Canvas's Pretty HTML Editor, meaning it is something about how the editor was implemented, which is an issue on Canvas's side of the Site-to-Browser communication. Second is something you pointed out. The Pretty editor is most helpful with longer pages, which is exactly where the ability to search is most useful. How did this get put into general use without anyone noticing the issue or even considering the role of searching as an important feature when editing HTML?

I have been using https://codepen.io/ to help. I copy the HTML over to there, do my editing, then copy it back. No account needed to use the Online Editor for a single page.

jnc
Community Explorer

Thanks @JeffCampbell @ it is certainly frustrating and not helped by inconsistent advice.  Nobody has tried to explain why it works for RAW and not PRETTY; they just conveniently ignore that part of the query!

Thanks for the codepen link - I've sometimes used Dreamweaver for the same purpose - but this is a much quicker and simpler option.

Julie

gulick_24
Community Participant

Thanks to everyone in this thread for their work in tracking down the issue. I came to the forums today after getting so frustrated with CTRL F not working; glad to see I'm not the only one for whom this issue renders the pretty HTML editor entirely useless. I will encourage others at my institution to upvote the feature request (even though there are differing answers to the 'feature request vs bug' approach).