When you search in page using Ctrl+F (command) to bring up the search tool bar, the entire website gets cropped from top and bottom. This cropping really eats up visible window size and that too knowing how browser already runs in a restrictive dimensions (letterboxing).
Also I noted that when you do this, there is this “lag” and responsiveness takes a huge hit to bring up this search bar. This becomes more pronounced as you go down the lower end machines and monitors.
This is clearly not Whonix issue but what purpose does this serve? Is this any security measurement? A simple search function is not even functioning well now!
Can you tell your environment of usage? like is it a Vbox or KVM or what? have you tried to assign more RAMs to whonix-workstation and if the issue solved?
Can you video shot the error you are facing? (you can do it with vokoscreen-ng as an example)
Windows as host. VBox and RAM assignment didn’t effect the results. This is also present outside of Whonix including the Tor Project and Tails.
The lag is very visible and to reproduce and be sure, I throttled down CPU performance. You will see a strange stuttering kind of behavior like the whole web page slowly “jumping” bring up the search bar.
For better comparison, see older version of browser without this new UI.
This minor change has happened after the Tor browser changed to landscape orientation. Not just that but if we compare a version prior to this change (and possibly before when this search design took place.), there is no such issue present.
It’s unfortunate that new updates are becoming more and more demanding and requiring a more powerful hardware even when it’s just a browser and that too a Tor browser. This could easily go back to how Mozilla as well.
Earlier I thought that the new search UI might have some security implementation as looked very similar to Letterboxing but it doesn’t seem to be the case.