Hi,
Just downloaded and built the latest from svn, and the "Find" and "Replace" dialogs really look great. :) I think the dialog that pops up to ask you if you want to wrap the search is good also, since, with other editors, sometimes you're clicking through too quickly and lose track if you've wrapped the search or not. The small dialog makes it noticable just the right amount, IMO.
But in the pursuit of finely-tuned perfection, here are some hopefully constructive comments:
In both the "Find" and "Replace" dialogs, you might change the text "Match only word start" to "Match only at start of word" and then provide a tooltip (is that the correct term? "popup help" maybe?) that says, "Only finds words that begin with the pattern you're searching for."
Actually, in both dialogs, you might consider disabling (greying out) "Match only a whole word", and "Match only at start of word"/"Match only word start" when the user selects "Use regular expressions", as those choices should make no difference when using regexes since the user would just use \b (erm... < and > I guess) if that's indeed what they wanted.
I see that you do provide the option of case insensitive regexes (which works nicely), though I suspect that the user will probably *expect* regex searches to be case sensitive by default -- thus you might consider making sure the "Case sensitive" checkbox gets flipped true (if not already selected) whenever the user selects "Use regular expressions". I think it would save the user some head-scratching. POLS (principle of least surprise) and all. :)
With regard to the "Replace control characters", I see that this means: if you put one of these 2-character patterns in your replace string (like \t), you'll actually get the control character when the replace happens (instead of the two separate '' and 't' characters). It may be an error that this option is in the "Find" dialog, correct?
Also regarding the "Find" dialog, it might be useful for the user to have a checkbox to "keep this dialog window open", since you might like to change one or more search options during a search. Maybe just my personal preference though. I see that I could just hit Ctrl-f to get that dialog up again if I need it.
Finally, with "Replace", a user might find it desirable to be able to replace a given bit of text, but then not automatically go on to the next occurrance (say you've got a large file with long stretches in between matches, not all of which you want to replace). It might be useful to have separate "replace" and "replace and find next" buttons. "find" could possibly even be changed to "find next" for extra clarity, but that's, again, maybe just personal preference.
Thanks for the great editor. Keep up the good work! :) ---John