Currently under the "Editor Settings" section of the settings pages there is a checkbox option for "Find text at cursor". I find that very useful, but I also like to have the find dialog box auto-populate with the last search that I did.

A way to provide both options in an intuitive manner (I think) would be to have an option called "Find selected text" or something similar that would allow you to manually select a portion of text and then hit "Ctrl + F" and have the search field populated with whatever you have selected. Then if you disable the "Find text at cursor" the IDE should by default populate the search field with the last search you performed.

This way you can alternate between searching with your last search term or the selected text by either highlighting or not highlighting a group of characters.

Make sense?