Search UX: Cancelling and Progress feedback

[normalser]

• VSCode Version: 1.4.0-insiders
• OS Version: OSX

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open Project with large number of files
2. Search for something

Search will start running but then it will get stuck (or gets very slow - waited 15 min and did not finish) - CPU is at > 100%

I know that there is related task to speed of search #55

But I would like to propose 2 small things that would help:

1. Ability to stop the search - especially if its very slow/stuck - right now the only option is to kill VSCode
2. Some progress indication so user can know that it is still searching (and not stuck) - eg. atom shows number of files that it searched

[kieferrm]

@wallverb how large is the workspace you search? Approximately how many matches? Any network folders involved?

[normalser]

Ok, so here are the details:

1. Workspace size: 1.30GB
2. Workspace files count: 30000
3. SSD
4. It did finish the search in: 10 minutes
5. It matched: 10 files

It turned out that by default it was searching build folder that has concatenated and minified js files (there were multiple builds inside)

Here is the experience:
Blue bar (that shows progress) was going good until 90-95% and got stuck (as in first picture above) - probably because it got to that build folder which has huge files that are minified (just my guess)

so what would help users:

1. Ability to stop/cancel search (right now the only way is to kill vscode)
2. Numeric progress (like Atom?) or maybe even to show dir and/or file being searched so that users know that it really progresses (and is not stuck) and maybe even realize that things like build folders are being searched (were not excluded in vscode config file)

Thanks

[sandy081]

@wallverb

Ability to stop/cancel search (right now the only way is to kill vscode)

You can also stop/cancel the current search by pressing esc key in search box.

[sandy081]

You can also exclude search from looking up into build or minimized files through following conf: search.exclude

[normalser]

@sandy081 Thanks for the info about esc trick - I guess I moved the focus away from that input box and did not think to click there again and hit Esc. Maybe adding one button or a text below (if there is no result) that Esc cancels the search - would be very helpful for users.

Although if this #9435 will be implemented then closing Tab would be very clear way for cancelling the search

and right about search.exclude - it's just that user wouldn't be able to realize that's where search is looking into right now - unless I waited 10 min and saw search result in this directory.

But I guess my case is pretty rare and #55 would help so feel free to close

[sandy081]

@wallverb I agree we need some ux assistance here to help users.

1. Discovering how to cancel the search - One option is to provide a text in the results view.
2. More detailed feedback / progress like in Atom

@stevencl FYI - We need some UX feedback here.

Thanks

[raldred]

What's providing the search?
Would it be possible to switch it ack?

[roblourens]

This should be faster in 1.8, and here's an issue to improve the progress bar - #16403