Can I search the posts in a topic?

ctrl+f will be quirky here because only the visible-ish part of the stream you are wading in is loaded at any given time.

Imagine a topic with 3,000 replies. Would all those be on the same “page”? (This will actually work OK on very small topics since the stream is so small it is actually all loaded on the page.)

We’ve talked about capturing ctrl+f and having it open the search button in the upper right.

There should be absolutely no issue with the back button, and that’s a far more critical piece than a keyboard shortcut most average folks don’t even know exists. Open as new tab will also work fine, with a caveat around a quirk of Firefox.