Find in Page Review

Over the years web browsers have become more and more sophisticated, adding features like tabbed browsing, bookmark syncing, developer debug modes, etc. Hands down though my favorite has got to be the "Find in Page" feature. Now I'm not talking about the Search bar that lets you Google your heart out without ever visiting Google's home page. No no, I'm referring to the feature that takes away the need to skim entire pages just to find the one or two sentences that pertain to you. All browsers do it slightly different but Safari's implementation has always been one of the best by dimming out all the other words and highlighting only the ones you're interested in. Why Apple didn't feel the need to port that feature over to mobile Safari, I'll never understand. Fortunately Vais Salikhov stepped up and succeeded where Apple did not. Find In Page is actually not an App in the strictest of senses, it's a bookmarklet, meaning that it's a small piece of Javascript the runs on top of Safari. For a more detailed explanation of how that works see the App's description page. The basic idea though is it sits as a normal bookmark in the bookmark menu but when you select it, instead of opening up a new page, a text box appears asking what word you would like to locate. Once submitted it will return the number of matches found and highlight them. A set of five buttons consisting of a previous and next arrow, info, a new search, and exit icon, will appear at the bottom of screen. Fortunately exiting the bookmarklet has no effect on the page itself.

Because it's not an app in the traditional sense it does require some extra steps for setting up. The app gives very straight forward directions and the steps you have to take and the developer's site has a demonstration video on how to perform them as well. It's really simple to do but I do recommend watching the video before purchasing it. The only other little hiccup is the inability to search phrases with different formatting. In other words if a phrase has one of its words in italics while the rest are standard text then it won't turn up in a search. Honestly I've never run into a situation where this was a problem and the only reason I know of it is because it's talked about in the app description.

In the end this is a must buy app. While some may not use it as often as I do, there's little doubt that at some point everyone will run into at least 1 situation where it would be nice to have.