1465029 - Implement |Subfolders| search option from Quick Filter Bar ("Filter these messages")

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #570384 +++

Coming from the enterprise use cases of Bug 570384 (sample user story below): This is an RFE to add subfolder capabilities to the Quick Filter Bar UI, which would be a massive improvement for searching folder hierarchies like yearly archives with monthly subfolders. And if we're lucky, this might actually be easy to implement, just add a "Subfolders" button to Quick Filter Bar and find a way to make the subfolder-capable backend of "Advanced search" return its result set into the default message list of TB's 3 pane view.

STR

- searching for a message in any of the subfolders of a given folder
- need fine-grained control of quick filter / advanced search algorithm

Actual result:

Searching subfolders is pretty clumsy.
- Quick Filter Bar can't do it at all because it's currently designed only for the selected folder.
- Advanced Search can do it, but it's hard to discover, and hard to use - unfortunately we don't offer quick filter's versatile |"Subject OR Sender OR Recipient" contains...| search, and afasics it's not possible to do that with advanced search for multiple search words which must both be contained somewhere.
- Global Search is hopeless, hard to search for partial matches, can't search very small strings at all, huge global scope, and ugly, non-versatile, and complex UI.

Expected result:

- Allow users to search the current folder AND its subfolders from Quick Filter Bar
- with the ease of use / ux-efficiency of Quick Filter
- with the great accuracy, speed, and versatility of Quick Filter

Suggested Implementation:

- Add a [Subfolders] toggle button on Quick Filter Bar
- Tooltip: "Show and search messages from subfolders"
- Suggested position: at the end of existing filters, after "Attachment" filter button
- Suggested behaviour:
  - when [Subfolders] button is pressed:
      - with no other filters set, show messages from current folder AND all subfolders in the message list (I think that's the most plausible; but maybe some would want to only include subfolders for quick filtering, not in unfiltered state?)
      - Adjust message list background colors as we do for quick filtering
      - When searching, return matching messages from current folder AND all subfolders
- Technical implementation: I think we already have most of the required backend from Advanced search (there's a checkbox "Include subfolders), so that just needs to be tweaked to show results in the default 3-pane message list, rather than the crippled message list in the "Search messages" dialog.

Benefits:

Quick Filter ROCKS. It's fast, easy, contextual, versatile, precise.
Quick Filter including Subfolders will ROCK even more, bringing the speed and efficiency of Quick Filtering to folder hierarchies. Especially useful for Archives, as seen on the enterprise use cases of 570384:

Enterprise user story from bug 570384:

> My Archive folder has these subfolders:
> 
> /2009
>    /2009-03
>    /2009-04
> /2010
> 
> When I am in Archives and try to find messages by Quick Filter, they are
> not found by filter... Quick filter searches only the current folder and
> doesn't search for messages in subfolders.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Richard, everyone, what do you think of this proposal?

Could you think of a "subfolders" icon? At the low cost of one [Subfolders] filter button on Quick Filter Bar UI, we could deliver a significant improvement to quick filter capabilities. The only accurate workaround, using QFB's sticky pin with a given filter and then clicking on each subfolder, is still pretty clumsy - think of doing that for 12 monthly subfolders of your yearly archive...

Apart from UX, any technical comments?

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Note the structural similarity of this RFE with what we did for the Address Book: After much demand from users, we added a "All Address Books" node to allow showing and searching entries from all ABs from a single starting point. The toggle button proposed here is just another variant to the same end.

Alternative Proposals for implementation:

P2: Maybe we could place the "Subfolders" button on the *secondary* (post-filter) quick filter facets bar, after facet buttons:[Sender][Recipients][Subject][Body][Subfolders]

With this variant (P2), I'm a bit worried in terms of ux-error-prevention that if we make the button status stick as we do with other facets, you'll start out from filtering (seeing) only messages of the current folder in the list, but the filtered result will suddenly include subfolders. If users overlook that "Subfolders" facet is still active, they could think that messages were found in the current folder, and user errors might result even dataloss when deleting messages based on that false assumption (ux-mode-error). Global search does a similar leap of scope, but it's not tied to a folder in the first place, and actually opens in a new tab.
We could make it so that [Subfolders] facet is a different animal which doesn't stick for next filter, but that's somewhat inconsistent and error-prone, too.

P1b: As a variant of my first proposal of comment 0, we could have an iconic "Subfolders" button placed next to the sticky pin button on the left of QFB. Reducing the visual impact / space needed, and grouping those two buttons with similar function together. Arguably also maybe less discoverable and less visible as a status indicator (compared to Icon+Text-Button).

Comment 3

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: subfolder.svg

This is a quickly done proposal for a subfolder icon.

Instead of placing it next to the sticky button, it could be placed next to the search field. Then it has normally some spacing to the other buttons but let the sticky button be alone for his special purpose.

Comment 4

[feluchs]

Unfortunately, this function is still missing.

Based on my experience with new users, I can say that this added search behavior corresponds with the search behavior and expectations of most users.

Please upgrade quickly.

Comment 5

[Bombuzal]

I think this would be useful please implement