increasing the usability of search dialogs

[John Tapsell]

> Yes it has nothing to do with search (or other application) dialogs.

I agree, but this is about reducing the number of popup dialogs.  I
think most of the arguments for/against embedding the search dialog
are the same for the loading a file etc.

I'm not really after a technical solution, but more a sort of
guideline.  Is it in general a good idea to reduce the number of
dialog boxes?  Are popup dialog boxes the new 'bad' thing?

Popups in general don't work very well with multiple documents (tabs
in a webbrowser, multiple files open in kate) and end up either
blocking the user from switching documents or disappearing when the
user switches documents, or just being confusing about which document
it is associated with.

I think this applies to file loading dialogs, error messages (note the
move of web browser to show error messages in the tab, not as a
popup), text search.

Perhaps a rule such as document-context-sensitive popups in a
multi-document application should be removed.