Hi, yes, we have made some more changes to search, including setting the cursor to the end of the existing search keyword instead of selecting it.
We also have added a partial fix for the issue you reported in Revert search to old live search pattern - #10 by Slowhand (mentioning it here since that topic is now closed). On topics with more than 20 posts, the Ctrl + F shortcut will load the in-topic search UI automatically (the UI has changed a bit here, but the basic functionality was there before this last round of changes.)