In that case, I don't really see any validity in the complaint. The search function is a temporary UI addition with a single purpose that goes away the moment you hit escape. Better yet, if you hit ctrl-f again, it comes back with the same text already entered.
Okay. These are all facts with respect to the find UI; yes, the things you say regarding hitting the escape key and the keyboard shortcut to make the find UI reappear—these are all true, factual things.
But this isn't a concession. You can say these things, but every one of them is immaterial to point that the find UI, when present, obscures parts of the page, where potentially those parts are functional UI for that page.
Hm. I don't know that this is a defense either - but this design decision was at least made deliberately, with awareness of the trade-offs involved.
" The find bar is presented as an overlay in order to prevent page relayout when the bar is shown or hidden. If the text the user is looking for is under the bar, it will scroll the page, or slide out of the way."
There seems to be a consistent, understandable aversion to pop up windows within Chrome. Excepting the Downloads bar, there also seems to be an aversion to shrinking the display area of the screen. Putting the Find in Page UI overlaying the site causes the browser to show more of the page than if it shifted the page down, something that is clearly a high priority for them (see the Status bar for an example).
Every design involves compromise. I think I prefer the way Chrome went on this one.
This is another factual statement which is also immaterial to the discussion, in much the same way that "an apple is an apple" is a factual statement, but immaterial here.
If you think that I'd summarize my comment above as, "there's no problem", you've misunderstood.
