as suggested in http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=23063.0, the <form> tag in searchnew.php is not properly nested which causes a validation issue.
corrected nesting of <form> tag in devel cvs (file revision 1.52). Please confirm.
Yes, it looks fixed to me... thanks for fixing it.. sorry, I hadn't had time to look into this yet. I'll try to get to using 1.4beta soon.