A couple of suggestions. First, generically, if I have text selected in a file, when I go to the replace dialog box I would expect to see, in the scope area, "selected text" highlighted. Having the scope be "global" in this situation exposes us to the risk of applying changes that extend beyond what we want. And I know, caveat emptor and all. Next, it would be nice if the dialog box could remember the last choice of scope and preselect it. That way if I am doing changes to a lot of selections I wouldn't have to keep reselecting the scope. Of course if you did the first fix the second would be less necessary but it would still be nice.

Remember that the real "danger" is that someone will inappropriately do global changes where they mean to do changes only to a selection. Not bad, if you notice it right away but terrible if you make a few hundred other changes before you notice it ... and that can happen all to easily.

And this is beyond the "scope" of this suggestion but you might want to look at separating replace in file from replace in selection at the next level up, on the search toolbar.

Finally, the way the text to find selection works, especially highlighting anything you have selected, doesn't seem particularly productive to me. I almost always wind up having to wipe it out and either input what I want or find it on the history list. I think it's much more likely that someone would want their last replace selection highlighted in order to apply it again.

Whatever it pulls up, I'd much prefer to have the history menu be a separate control from which you can select an item. Having it work auto-complete style has more than a few times led to me accidentally replacing something I just typed with something from the history, which is really annoying.

That would work for me too. Or maybe taking a look at how other "mature" editors work and trying to copy the best and brightest. I'm not trying to design this, just express my opinion that the current arrangement doesn't work that well.

While you are at it, how about having search loop around past the end of file back to the point where the user is at the time the search starts. Or at least give that option or if you go to eof and hit f3 then keep looping. Sort of like Firefox does when you do view source and then use the find feature.

I tend to concur with the concept of "if text is selected, make default text selected" rather than global on that one radio button.. It is too easy to make a mistake. I don't see a lot of use for the cursor feature, but maybe some day?

Overall, the replace function is ok, just different from some of the others I have used. Some features are pretty handy.

If I have "Selected Text" as my latest option, do not close the Replace window. Just let me stay there and hammer away at the selected text. This kind of thing happens more often than you think it will.