517036 - Disable autocomplete in search field if one of the quick-search modes is selected.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Description

[Frédéric Buclin]

I'm always doing searches where the subject or sender matches XXX, but Tb3b4 (build4) looks everywhere instead of what I'm asking for. In my testcase, I want all emails sent by a colleague, but Thunderbird returns messages where my colleague is in the To or CC field. Exactly the opposite of what I want.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Please can you explain how you are doing this search. We no longer (afaict) have the "subject or sender" as a label, so do you mean you're dropping down the search menu and selecting "Subject or From filter"?

Or are you using Search Everywhere or Advanced Search?

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #1)
> the search menu and selecting "Subject or From filter"?

Yes, that's the one (sorry for the bad translation; I'm using the french version of Tb3).

Comment 3

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I'll look at that. It's a possible regression from the refactoring.

Comment 4

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Hmm -- I can't repro in the en-US nightly build.  I wonder if it's a localization bug.  No, 

http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.1/fr/file/daa2f264d43b/mail/chrome/messenger/quickSearch.properties

maps searchFromOrSubject.label to "Filtrer par sujet ou expéditeur", which reads right to me.  

Frederic, c'est ça que tu as utilisé?  C'est quoi ton test-case?

Comment 5

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Frederic, c'est ça que tu as utilisé?  C'est quoi ton test-case?

Yes, that's the filter I used. My testcase is to have some emails sent to you by userA, and some emails sent to you and userA (and other users, I guess it doesn't matter). When you use the filter mentioned above, you get both emails sent by userA and emails that userA got.

Comment 6

[Frédéric Buclin]

To be exact, when I start typing the name of the colleague in the search field, a list appears which lets me select a user. When you select the colleague, a new tab is opened with stats at the top followed by a list of emails where the colleague is not always the sender. So that's not the list I want. But if I close this tab, I realize that the original tab (the one with all email accounts) now displays the list I want. This is confusing as the search field offered me to select someone in the list and opened a new tab. So this new tab must also respect my criteria.

Comment 7

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Aha!  I see.  You (reasonably!) assumed that the autocomplete is informed by the search mode, as it shows up.  It's not -- the autocomplete results currently do a "search everywhere" feature, not the "filter by" behavior which the quicksearch has always done. IOW, the autocomplete ignores the mode setting, and treats it as "search everywhere".

I guess i should really either 
 
a) disable the autocomplete if in one of the quicksearch modes
2) change the autocomplete results to somehow make it clear what it's currently doing
III) change the autocomplete logic to do something like what you want, which is a search everywhere informed by the mode.  

In the longer term (post TB3), I think we'll want a much more sophisticated autocomplete widget, which allows what you want, but I think III would really confuse people who are fond of the current filtering behavior.  2) I think would be verbose and confusing as well.

I'm going to go with a) for TB3, I think...  

Including bryan for his input.

Comment 8

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

a) seems like an easy and reasonable option to start with

A future option for the TB 3.1 time frame could be something like this: 

⅘) change the auto-complete to be filter mode aware such that if you're filtering for a "to" the auto-complete only offers suggestions based on the available "to" criteria in that message list.  And likewise for the other filter modes.  Not sure how difficult this is but I would think it gets the correct behavior and likely improves the overall quick search experience.

Comment 9

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Attachment: patch for review

Comment 10

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

Comment on attachment 401315 [details] [diff] [review]
patch for review

like it

Comment 11

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked in: http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/1dded56b2471