
90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F (or CMD + F) - dm8
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/
======
patio11
Welcome to my inbox. Things that got taught the same day at Ctrl-F: the file
system metaphor, right clicking, refreshing web pages, copy/pasting, taking
screenshots, attaching files, and reading (or copy/pasting) error messages.
The difference between web pages, programs, and email. The notion that
computers behave in a predictable manner and that experiences on them are
connected to each other across individual tasks.

~~~
davidw
Before embarking on LiberWriter I would have thought you were exaggerating for
comedic effect.

OTOH, the flip side is that you can accomplish things that for these people
are essentially 'magic', and when employed to save them countless hours, earn
you vast amounts of gratitude, as I'm sure you're aware.

------
ryanklee
It is interesting how many comments on this page are focused on the short-cut
rather than the underlying functionality. Ctrl-F itself has nothing to do with
it and is purely incidental. The real rub here is that people don't understand
that they can search for a sequence. This is equivalent to losing your keys
and then locating them only by sense of smell.

~~~
gfodor
Beyond that, people also generally don't know that you can actually learn the
commands to do things with the keyboard by reading the menus.

~~~
nitrogen
Unfortunately, many applications and operating systems have decided to hide
keyboard shortcuts and underlined accelerator keys, in the interest of "user
friendliness."

~~~
Sniffnoy
Wait, like what?

~~~
nitrogen
Windows, for example, won't show the underlines for keyboard accelerators
until you hold down the Alt or Ctrl key (I can't recall which, because I
always disable the option). Unfortunately I can't recall which application(s)
I was using that didn't show keyboard shortcuts next to menu items.

------
ojosilva
I wrote an app for a large customer (a bank) that automates some mainframe
jobs from the unix side, then publishes its logs in a very simple webpage with
only PRE html tags.

I was amazed and confused when some users, all of them mainframe developers,
came to me to ask if I could put a search box into that page. I replied
"come'on, use Ctrl+F". You should see the look in their faces when they saw me
doing it, with the keyboard first, then from the "Edit" menu. They replied
"yeah, but most users don't know they can do that". I ended up incorporating a
(slow) javascript search box from the web into that page. Now they're happy.

So it's not just grandpa who doesn't know about Ctrl-F.

------
resdirector
_It makes me think that we need a new type of class in schools across the land
immediately. Electronic literacy._

Negatory. We need to improve our UI _metaphors_. In the case of finding
something, holding down one key while pressing another has no parallel to real
life searching.

Let me tell you a story about my mum trying to view a slideshow on a mac. She
double clicked on one of the photos (double clicking didn't come natural for
her, but that's another story). Then she tried using the left and right
arrows. Nothing. I noticed that Preview was only loading up the photo she
clicked on, so there was only one photo in the slideshow. I helped her by
selecting all the photos and dragging them onto the preview application.

But select-all and drag onto an icon had no real life metaphor for my mum and
I didn't even bother trying to explain why it worked. (Maybe if there was some
image of a slide projector and she could drag each image into a slot...but
then again, I've got a terrible UI brain...)

tl;dr: if the UI is broken, fix the UI, not the end user.

~~~
nkassis
The thing is I think end users are evolving. I find that the generations that
grew up before pervasive computers were pervasive are the ones having the most
issue with these things. When I watch my 7 year old nephew use a computer 10
times better than his parents, it makes me thing that maybe designing UI to
match "real life" concepts might not work so well for future users. Desktops,
folders, ... those concepts that are supposed to match real things are now
becoming a hindrance and limitation on the older computer users today. Just
the idea of having the same file be part of multiple folders is complicated
for some users.

~~~
inportb
I think Google's label/tag metaphor for email classification is rather
natural. Of course, it could get confusing when your labels are implemented
using folders, such as via links.

------
siavosh
I can definitely vouch for this. I have a lot of exposure to medical back
office staff, and I do a lot of trainings with them for my company's medical
software. I'll no longer be shocked when I recommend that they just search the
page for a name, and their first attempt is to start reading the whole page.

This highlights a few important facts. First, you can't write good software
without being out in the "field" and really observing how your users use your
product. It's very easy to get in the pattern of writing software for other
techies. Second, something very simple as learning how to use Cntrl-F can
drastically improve someone's quality of life. You don't need to build a fancy
new algorithm, but you definitely do need to design a great intuitive user
experience.

~~~
city41
It's really eye opening in a good way. Teaching my Mom how to use her first
computer (which had Windows 98 on it) was all I needed to fully understand why
Mac mice only have one button.

~~~
hugh3
Or at least, they used to only have one button.

I've just acquired a new mac with Lion and a Mighty Mouse, and the number of
functions built into that apparently-buttonless mouse is slightly
overwhelming. I don't think I've discovered them all yet.

It's okay for me, but I can easily imagine your mother accidentally doing a
two-finger horizontal swipe, winding up on another workspace, and being
entirely confused about how to get back.

~~~
robin_reala
A couple of my friends have had their installs of Vista Basic replaced with
Ubuntu* and the first thing I’ve always done is disable the multiple workspace
switcher. It’s useful to some but exceedingly confusing to the other 90%.

* This was at the point that they were going to give up and buy a new computer anyway due to OEM bloatware, so no harm in trying a new OS.

~~~
maguay
Multiple desktops is definately one thing few have gotten used to, though Lion
may make them much more mainstream. I think Mission Control, especially on a
touchpad with a 3-finger push shortcut, seems as natural as it could be.

------
jdoliner
I actually strongly disagree with the idea of an Electronic Literacy class, at
least I disagree with it as a class which basically teaches people tricks like
control-f that can save them time. Let me relay a story:

In college I worked as a T.A. for in intro programming class for non majors.
For some the course started out teaching the students to use Nano as a text
editor and assumed that they would choose a more full featured editor whenever
they saw fit. Now Nano is a really bare bones editor, it doesn't even have
line numbers. And not having line numbers is a serious problem when you're
trying to debug c++ compiler errors that reference lines by number. I kid you
not I saw kids counting down 100s of lines from the top of the file to get to
the listing of the errors.

Now the thing about this situation is: these were perfectly electronically
literate people. They all knew about Ctrl-F. And could easily be taught more
tricks. The problem is they'd never grasped the philosophy of computers.
Specifically that when a task that's so simply stated is taking too long
there's normally a better way to do it. Or if there isn't it's an opportunity
for you to make a better way to do it.

All of the students simply assumed that if there was a trick they'd have been
told about it already so no one inquired further.

~~~
LordLandon
Hey, don't diss nano like that. Try alt+c, or ctrl+g. Looks like you didn't
try looking for a solution either (=

First thing you should teach in a class like that is to teach them to fish for
tricks in the manpages/docs rather handing them individual tricks throughout.

~~~
6ren
i.e. teach them how to teach themselves: scan menus, google, ask.
<http://xkcd.com/627/>

~~~
nitrogen
Unfortunately you can't just point random people to that chart, because
there's a reasonable chance they won't know how to read it.

------
edtechdev
Yeah, too many developers don't seem to have a good understanding of the
average user (and don't do any usability testing), and end up spending a lot
of time on arcane features that most people don't use or don't want to use
(but are forced to). Like so many keyboard shortcuts and hidden menu options.
In general, if it is out of site (like in a menu), it is out of mind. Or
software is designed for text input since it is easier to code than visual
interfaces.

Other examples are all the keyboard shortcuts in Google's web apps:
[http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?answer=69...](http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?answer=69973)
or having to type the name of an application to use it in Ubuntu Unity or
Gnome 3, or Wikipedia's syntax, which excludes most users from contributing:
[http://calacanis.com/2007/02/20/technological-
obscurificatio...](http://calacanis.com/2007/02/20/technological-
obscurification-three-ways-wikipedia-keeps-99-of/)

My rule of thumb generally is to pretend I am designing for an 8th grader.
That may still be overshooting a bit though.

------
scelerat
Most people don't care.

That was my impression anyway after doing about four years of IT and lab
support for student government and activity groups at a large UC in the '90s.

The ones who did were bound for engineering or science, or were simply
practically curious.

~~~
spodek
We tech-savvy people think ctrl-f is so basic we can barely conceive how could
anyone not know it. How could they not?

Somewhere there is a discussion group where people can't believe people don't
know you can wear something other than geeky looking clothes. They can't
believe someone would wear baggy jeans, a baggy t-shirt they got free at a
conference, and white sneakers.

To say other people don't care is accurate, but doesn't do justice to the
diversity of interests out there.

They have other priorities.

Yes, some are lazy or daft, but while you figured out how to use ctrl-f other
people were learning to ski, climbing a mountain, jumping out of a plane,
learning to dress fashionably, picking up girls, picking up guys, teaching
their kids piano, etc. Even the lazy ones probably enjoyed being lazy and
don't care about streamlining their searches. And the daft ones, well, if they
have a learning disability or something like that, that's their story.

Viewing people having other interests as something to learn from and celebrate
makes the world a different place. The humility that comes with it leads to
much more learning about the world.

~~~
bluedanieru
You're comparing basic computer use to hobbies. That may have been somewhat
accurate 20 years ago; it isn't anymore.

They don't care, but the lack of caring is getting to the point where it's
more like they don't care how to use a shower (wow I can't believe I've been
taking ice-cold showers all this time!) or drive a car, etc.

~~~
dagw
_or drive a car,_

Half my friends don't know or care how to drive a car. I'm 32, don't have a
licenses, and can probably count on my fingers the number of times I've
genuinely wished I had one. Just because something is vital to you and your
social circle doesn't make it universally true.

~~~
bluedanieru
It isn't vital to me either and I don't own one, living as I do in an area
with great mass transit and where parking the thing would cost more than
housing in a lot of places. But to be an adult and not know _how to drive_ ,
regardless of whether you actually have a car, is a pretty shitty situation. I
went on vacation recently and it was great to be able to drive, because the
area we were in demanded it.

None of this addresses my point, which is that computing is an essential
skill. Are you disputing that as well?

~~~
spodek
"None of this addresses my point, which is that computing is an essential
skill."

My first example of something people do that some make a priority and learn to
do well was wearing clothing and being stylish. Members of this community have
ready access to dress stylishly but I'd wager few do. Somewhere some stylish
people can't believe they do that in the same way many people here are
suprised people don't know ctrl-f.

Different priorities.

------
drinian
The really interesting point is that people don't seem to put any thought into
what _should_ be possible with a computer.

Intuitively, people with a decent mental model of how text is processed by
computers would expect that the computer could search through that text, and
look for a command in the program to do that. But many people's mental model
is that they are looking through a sheet of paper displayed on the screen.

How to change this is going to be difficult.

------
dpcan
Maybe that's because sometimes it's F3, or /, or Ctrl-F, or Edit -> Find.

I think most people know Edit->Find

Do 90% of people not know what a keyboard shortcut is? Yeah, I believe that.

~~~
nooneelse
> I think most people know Edit->Find

That doesn't really mesh with the quote, which was, "I do these field studies
and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've
read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for."

~~~
esrauch
It does mesh if the context he examined was in a browser where there is no
Edit > Find.

~~~
nkassis
hum, there is a menu option for find in all browsers I know of. Sure, under
chrome it's in the wrench menu but if it's a menu it might as well be lost for
a large group of users.

~~~
city41
Chrome's Find menu has "Search the Web", "Find", "Find Next", "Find Previous",
"Use Selection for Find" and "Jump to Selection". I'm willing to bet non-
techies would be utterly confused by all those possibilities.

~~~
statictype
Yes, it is confusing.

On the other hand, the Wrench menu (not the standard Mac menu on top) has a
single 'Find...' option with the Command-F shortcut label next to it.

~~~
dpcan
Which is also F3.

------
imperialWicket
Of those of us making up the 10% who do use Ctrl/Cmd + F (or '/', or some
keyboard shortcut for find); how many find themselves saying "Ctrl F" out loud
when looking for something on a piece of paper (or somewhere in local space)?

I constantly catch myself chanting, "Ctrl F, Ctrl F, Ctrl F" in frustration as
I search for a lost item or try to find a keyboard shortcut on a quick
reference sheet that's printed.

~~~
eru
Try, "grep grep grep". That's easier to say.

~~~
hugh3
OK, now I'm curious.

> cd /usr/bin/

> grep grep grep

 _Binary file grep matches_

It's nice to know that there is indeed a grep in grep when you grep grep for
grep.

~~~
gwern
There's a lot of grep in grep:

[10:37 PM] 97Mb$ strings `which grep`|grep grep `egrep' means `grep -E'.
`fgrep' means `grep -F'. Direct invocation as either `egrep' or `fgrep' is
deprecated. egrep fgrep bug-grep@gnu.org GNU grep
<http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/> others, see
<[http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>](http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>);

------
mgkimsal
It'd help if there was a way to trigger a search dialog via javascript.

document.searchfind.open();

and have that open up the browser's search box - be it a dialog or a bar at
the top or bottom. That would allow us to associate clicking an icon with
action that brings up a search input.

Or hey... have the search dialog always open. Many users (most?) at least
understand the notion of internet search, and it's helped a lot that there's
an internet search box at the top of all major browsers for the past several
years.

Adding a default 'page search' box that's open all the time would be a big
signal to users that this functionality even exists in the first place.

I'd say the same thing for privacy - screw 3 levels of SSL certificate hell
and warning - give everyone a little cookie icon that shows, in nice easy
language, the sites tracking you and the data they have stored in your
cookies, and give an easy way - from the main browser screen - to _poof_ them
away. Shrill warnings about "web privacy" would go way down if the average
user had one-click access to see what's being tracked.

~~~
windsurfer
Maybe a simple button, but where would you put a whole box?

Perhaps if there was an api to tell browsers to keep it open, it would be
okay.

------
doublesprout
There really isn't a way to learn hotkeys other than searching for them and
practicing, and people expect computers to be intuitive so much that they
never do that. I wonder how many people aren't consciously aware of how much
faster they could get at using their computer if they spent an hour learning.

~~~
aw3c2
Middle-aged to elderly women LOVE hotkeys. Show them how to cut/copy and paste
text with Ctrl-C|X|V and they are hooked. Ctrl-A to select everything is
another such gem.

Or holding Shift or Ctrl to select multiple items (eg files to delete).

They always(!) lighten up and smile when I show them (no hyperbole!).

~~~
w1ntermute
One of the reasons that elderly people like keyboard shortcuts is because
learning how to use a mouse can be quite difficult, as it requires precise
hand-eye coordination (which is also why it's slow, causing techies to rely on
the keyboard as much as possible). At that age, not only is it difficult to
learn how to operate new devices, but their afferent & efferent neurons may
not be up to the task to begin with.

~~~
thyrsus
Yup. When my mom tries to double click a mouse button, I hear anything from
two to five clicks, and the mouse shudders under her hand as she attempts
this. The result is predictably unpredictable. She seems to do OK with single
clicks.

------
Adkron
So many complain that sometimes it is this or that shortcut. That shortcut
seems to only change in IDEs and common dev tools. Usually changing because
the C-f is used for some other more common coding task.

In programs used by the general public I have a hard time finding when
C-f(cmd-f for mac users) is not the standard for search.

Schools should have a class on finding data. When I was in school we had to
have at least one electronic source in our papers. This was supposed to help
kids learn how to look up data electronically. They should take one day every
year to teach kids how to mine that data with google, and things like c-f.
This would allow the kids to find the data they need much faster, and may
actually make them enjoy finding and learning more.

------
kentbuckle
Is it 90% of people who don't know the keyboard shortcut, or the find
functionality?

~~~
pwpwp
Apparently both, which is really shocking!

------
jneal
This is one of those things I'm constantly explaining to friends, clients, and
others. It seems so trivial to me, the ctrl+f brings up the search dialog, but
at least if someone doesn't know the shortcut surely they would know of the
search dialog itself? I've found over the years this is definitely not the
case, anything that's not blatantly obviously with buttons on the browser is
never known by the majority of the people that I interact with.

In terms of this particular feature, I love CTRL+F and I use it on a daily
basis.

------
cydonian_monk
This is a case where the MS Visual Studio forced on me at work poisons my
mind. Ctrl+F brings up some big ugly search modal, while Ctrl+D pops straight
to the quick search text box. Whenever I switch from VisStudio to a web
browser (or pretty much anything sane), I always catch myself trying to
bookmark a page instead of search. (Of course my prefered search key is / but
that's not really an option here....)

That 90% of people don't know about 'Find' functions (^F/⌘F)? Boggles.

~~~
xyzzyz
In Emacs, incremental search is under C-s, so this habit is actually helpful
when using non-emacs software -- it makes you save your work often.

~~~
dhbanes
Yeah, it must be awesome to have the "Save Page As..." dialog box pop up in
your web browser 100 times a day.

------
JoeAltmaier
I put a keyboard shortcut into an operating system once - Action-delete to
clear the keyboard buffer. You know, you were compiling on a command line and
tried to type in the next command and messed it up and wanted to go home but
now you have to either kill the build and start again, or wait half an hour
for the build to complete and retype the line?

I never found anybody else, ever, who knew about this one. I used it a dozen
times a day.

------
athst
I wonder if this is going to become even more of a problem as OS's become more
gesture-based like iOS and Lion. All of the three- and four-finger swiping
actions in Lion are amazing and useful, but only if you know about them and
can remember them. Apple stores do a pretty good job of educating people when
you go in to buy a new Mac, but "pinch with 5 fingers to open launchpad" might
be harder to learn than "cmd + f"

~~~
aquark
I love the swipe gestures in Lion, but find I often have to undo and redo them
because I chose the wrong one.

Particularly if I end up using the trackpad at an angle so a vertical (to me)
swipe is more of a diagonal on the trackpad.

------
chromic
Funny, I blanked out when I read CTRL+F. Guess it's just muscle memory now.

~~~
ahenchan
Same here. Thought I must be in the 90%. It depends on how the test was
conducted.

------
llambda
Same article, without all the distractions and better formatting:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2011/08/crazy-90...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-
of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/)

------
buddylw
I wonder what survey group would they have put me in if I had told them that
ctrl + f was page-down?

------
shinratdr
I learned this when I was mentioning to people how happy I was that they had
finally added webpage search to MobileSafari in iOS. Nobody had any clue what
I was talking about. I tried relating it to Command/Control-F in their browser
and nobody had ever seen the feature before.

I find this amazing, as the Find feature in a browser is my most common
fallback. Too lazy to keep looking for something on a long page? Just use
Find. Hell, they should teach it to you at school. It makes internet research
much easier.

~~~
s00pcan
I think the whole reason is that it isn't always showing on the page; it's
hidden behind a shortcut. If the find bar was always visible like the address
bar, I'm sure more users would use the find feature.

------
Cilvic
We develop a training software teaching you the keyboard shortcuts for the
functions you click most (www.veodin.com). It's analyzing daily routines
(counts GUI interactions) and sorts and filters the list of available
shortcuts accordingly.

We will also generate automatically small macros from patterns in the users
behavior.

While this only helps you improve the workflow of a task, I hope that our
software will one day be able to recommend CTRL+F to people by comparing
"fast" users with average users.

------
super_mario
How many developers you work with know how to search/navigate the code base
effectively? How many of them know and use regular expressions when ever they
can? How many of them feel really comfortable with find/xarg/(e)grep? How many
of them know advanced editor like vim/emacs? How many of them know that there
is something like pentadactyl for firefox?

I thought so. So, I can't really say I'm surprised that 90% of people don't
know how to search either.

------
rokhayakebe
I swear someone called me _genius_ last week after I did CTRL+U to try and
find if a site was using a CMS like WP, Joomla etc...

~~~
s00pcan
I was at a golf store that had an outside tent with a computer to register for
their mailing list. I noticed it was in php and started looking at the source
to see what it was using. The employee who saw me wasn't happy, but it was
pretty harmless.

~~~
rokhayakebe
I guess this is how my mechanic felt when I take my car in and he fixes it in
a snap.

------
tincholio
The fact that the author refers to the search / find in text functionality by
'CTRL+F' instead of its name, and refers to it as a 'trick' doesn't cast his
proficiency in the best of lights.

------
commieneko
The fact that many developers are surprised by this, or think this is a bad
thing, shows why so much software is so poorly designed for use by
nontechnical people.

------
cafard
And 98 percent don't know how to use search-forward-regexp.

~~~
ckoning
WAY more than 98%. 98% or more don't even know what a regexp is, let alone how
to construct one to match what they want to find, and then use the search-
forward-regexp tools to actually find the matches.

------
dm8
Another issue I find is lack of education given to users after installing
software/application. Commands like Ctrl/Cmd + F are not easy to discover.
Especially for the people with lesser computer literacy. I believe a simple
tour of how stuff in your application will work; right after installing it
will give some idea to majority of users. Of course not everyone will sit
through whole tour but there needs to be some sort of education of end-users
in interactive format rather than typical "read me" files.

------
jeffreyrusso
I watch people use software all day long, and this comes up all the time. 90%
sounds about right.

------
statictype
If you think Ctrl-F is bad, wait till you see how you find text within the
page on Mobile Safari.

~~~
sneak
How? I assumed one could not until seeing it alluded to on this page.

~~~
statictype
You can type in the text to search for in the main search box on the top. When
it pops up the list of suggestions, after it, shows a section with matches on
the current page.

The only way I knew it was there was because I read somewhere that Mobile
Safari supports searching within the page, and I then had to Google for it to
find out how to actually use it.

------
radley
In my world, Cmd-F means Fullscreen.

~~~
mcrider
You mean Cmd-shift-F? I haven't experienced Cmd-F as full screen in any mac
apps I've run across.

~~~
5hoom
In Xcode cmd-shift-f means "find in project", never used it to fullscreen an
app but I might be missing something ;)

[edit]

Oops, you said ctrl-shift-f, not cmd-shift-f. My bad!

------
nvictor
more people should use vim or emacs. after using these text editors for a
while you always try to find similar shortcuts in every apps you use daily.

i guess the programmer (Braam?) who said vim changes your efficiency habits
was right...

~~~
agildehaus
You're totally welcome to try to teach my mother how to use vim.

~~~
eru
That would be fun to watch, though very frustrating for both of them.

------
johnl
Doesn't F3 in Firefox do the same thing? Then F3 for next instance, etc.

------
s00pcan
First this, next someone's going find that 95% or more don't even know how to
modify GET requests in their address bar and read the HTML source to websites
to figure out how to better navigate websites.

------
puredemo
I sent that link to a coworker I was IMing with when I read it. A minute later
he wrote back, "mmm, I didn't know that either."

He's not a programmer, but still. Wow.

------
uriel
Another sad thing (credit for noting this goes to Rob Pike years ago) is that
after years of development and hundreds of thousands of lines of code web
browsers still don't support searching with regexps! (Hell, Chrome doesn't
even support case sensitive search.) I'm sure there are extensions for this,
but the browser is in an infinitely better position to implement this
consistently and reliably.

This is a feature ed had 40 years ago.

~~~
dave1010uk
I had a Firefox extension on my PC that did this pretty well. You can always
do a "curl | grep" in an emergency.

Imagine a world where most people understood regular expressions. Definitely
going to teach my son about them when he's mastered times tables.

------
brackin
Can't imagine a world without CMD + F

