309380 - Search field for Thunderbird-Macintosh does not behave like Search field in any other Macintosh program

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Michael Dautermann]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5
Build Identifier: version 1.6a1 (20050920)

The search field found in the Thunderbird UI (in the top right of the main message browser window and 
the Address Book) doesn't behave the same way as the search fields found in other Macintosh apps.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In the Finder, select "Find" under the File menu. 
2. In the Search field, type in some word.  
3. Once the word is type in.  Click in the middle of it.  The word will alternate between being 
highlighted and having an insertion cursor flashing on and off.
4.  Try a search in Thunderbird's Message Browser window.
Actual Results:  
Under Thunderbird, double clicking on a word in the Search field causes the whole field to highlight 
(regardless of how many words are typed in the field).  

Expected Results:  
It should behave the same as other standard Apple apps.

Comment 1

[Josh Aas]

I don't really understand the description in this bug. Can you be more clear?

"Once the word is type in.  Click in the middle of it.  The word will alternate
between being highlighted and having an insertion cursor flashing on and off."

That part in particular is confusing.

Comment 2

[Michael Dautermann]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I don't really understand the description in this bug. Can you be more clear?

Try bring up Thunderbird and some other standard Macintosh application that has a "Search" field 
somewhere in a dialog box.

Type in some text into the Search field for both Thunderbird (in either the main U.I. window or in the 
address book) and type in some text into the Search field for the standard Mac application.

If you click on any part of the Search phrase in the standard Mac app... clicking the cursor will alternate 
between an insertion point and highlighting the word out of the phrase (I think a third click highlights 
the whole phrase, too).  With Thunderbird, all one can do is highlight the whole phrase in the Search 
field.  No insertion cursor appears.  

Here's hoping this explanation is a little more helpful.  

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

Our search-field behaves like the location-bar : a single-click doesn't select the entire field, but places the insertion point. See bug 233977 and bug 134649 for details.

It's true that this is different from for instance the Finder (single-click selects the field), but we are consistent with Safari and Camino, iCab and Omniweb. That's because we follow the 'Cocoa' model (FF isn't Cocoa, we emulate it here), while the Finder is a Carbon app. The Apple HIG doesn't mention this case specifically, it's one of the things that are fundamentally different between Carbon and Cocoa (Apple is seriously inconsistent, because they ship an OS with both).

I agree that a single-click for the selection is probably better for a search-field, but then it would be inconsistent with the location field just on the left of it (where the current behaviour is more appropriate).

Comment 4

[Jo Hermans]

Oh, I meant Thunderbird ofcourse, not Firefox. But the discussion is the same.