Search facility in Preferences Dialog

[Vinyl Wiper]

It would be really helpful if some sort of search facility could be put into the Preferences dialogs.

In Directory Opus, the Prefs panes are searchable, with the found preferences displayed alone or highlighted.

I'm not asking for that level of sophistication, but it would be helpful if some sort of search facility was available in the prefs. Maybe something that just switched to the page the first (and subsequent) matches were on? Of course, that also needs to work with "child" panes as well.

What do you guys think?

[redwing]

Great idea! Why don't you post this on the wishlist board?

[boroda]

+1

[psychoadept]

Definitely a +1

[ma_t14]

+1

Also this should be related to my post here:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=9213.msg54130#msg54130

[VX]

+1
that would be very useful if implemented

@Vinyl Wiper
I suggest to change the title of the topic to a more informative one

[redwing]

I guess implementing this would require some major work, possibly including redesigning the dialog.
An easy way might be to add a search box and to highlight tabs, options, and text that contain the search terms.
Then the user can check each highlighted tab. It should include options hidden inside pop-up boxes.

[Vinyl Wiper]

I've done something similar (though not quite as complicated) a couple of times - and it's not that difficult to do (search-wise, anyway).

I ended up building the dialogs programmatically. That gave me the ability to add what are called "tags" to the dialog window objects. (A better way these days would be to add the string/help text as a linked object itself). Then I just scanned the tags. What I *didn't* do at the time was the elegant display of _just the results_ displayed in their own pane/modal dialog/window. Nowadays I'd probably disable all the non-matching components in that dialog, just as a shortcut.

I agree, there are some really elegant programs out there, also with complex preferences, that now provide this type of search facility. If anyone's ever used Opus, you'll know what I mean. (I'll grab some screenshots when I get it reinstalled) But I wouldn't expect that level of sophistication here, it's probably overkill!

The reason I didn't post this in the wishlist initially was that I considered this more of a 'debugging' request, rather than a feature people would regularly use. But I guess with something as flexible and powerful as MusicBee is becoming, it would be useful to a wider range of folks than I thought... cool!

[HHM]

+1

[greenday1987]

Done right, this could be awesome