319540 - Quicksearch from mail (without typing)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Claus Berghammer]

User-Agent:       Opera/9.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; de)
Build Identifier: Thunderbird Version 1.5 (20051025)

Feature Request:

It would be nice if there were a possibility to ad strings to the quicksearch box by dragging a mail to the box, or from the mails "right click menu". That would lead to the folowing workflow:

pick a mail from "[e-mail]" and drag it on the quicksearchbox. The quicksearch is activated, and all messages from "[e-mail]" are displayed.

To decide if the user wants to filter on the address, subject or date, the current setting of the quicksearchbox could be used, or (if possible) decide on the column in which the user grabed the mail.

The rightclickmenu should not need this "inteligence". A menu like "Quicksearch -> Search this Sender/Search this Subject/Search this Date" shold do it fine.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

drag and drop would be nice.

if drag location/column can be detected (subject, sender, recipient, etc) then great. otherwise suggest the default put into quicksearch be both sender and subject, i.e. <sender>|<subject>

Comment 2

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

UI ideas, CC'ing Bryan.

Comment 3

[ovidiu]

I see it this way:
-drag and drop could work for body txt, [bringing "entire msg" quick search]
-for header elements that may be tricky as the user may accidentally click on the mail address or other links instead of dragging. 

This could be solved by adding a little tiny magnifier next or before the header fields corresponding to quick search criteria (from,to etc) as it was presented a recent "add to addr book" little icon here:
http://clarkbw.net/designs/add-contacts/add-contact-inline.png
In this case, the quick search should consider the appropriate criteria .. (Simpler than just with drag)

Comment 4

[Claus Berghammer]

@ovidiu
My initial idea was based on the mails in the "message-list-pane", not the "mail-preview-pane" (don't know if these are the right names for the parts of the mainwindow). So there are no problems with the message-header or body on that way...

Of course, quicksearch from "mail-preview-pane" or "mail-preview-window", as ovidiu discribed could also be possible...

Comment 5

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Cool idea, but d&d often means an undiscovered feature.  It would be great to have this search method as actions built into messages as well.  Links or buttons integrated into the headers that could start this kind of search.  Right click options as well could work to support some main interaction methods.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Nostalgy extension baby!

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug 518295 should provide some relief.

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Bug 518295, 550832 have similar, yet more specific requests to add "filter/search involving <contact>" to the context menu of the mail's *senders/recipients*. That sounds a lot easier to implement and should be given priority over this one. But I also like this one!

Bug 461721 also requests "quicksearching" for msgs involving contacts, but starting out from a given contact in *address book*.