539650 - address book autocompletion should propose the primary address before the secondary

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 543088

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[marco.gaddoni]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091216 Iceweasel/3.5.6 (like Firefox/3.5.6; Debian-3.5.6-1) GTB6
Build Identifier: 

when typing an address in the to field, for example, 
thunderbird show every name that matches what i have typed; 
it should propose the primary address first.

see discussion
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1615365

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Roberto Bagnara]

I think this is a serious misfeature.  IMHO, the addresses should be showed in this order:

1) first the matching screen names;
2) then the matching primary addresses;
3) then the matching secondary addresses;
4) then the addresses on the "collected" section of the address book.

Since when I upgraded to TB3 I keep sending emails to the wrong addresses... I am too used to the right behavior.  For example, one of my coworkers is Pat and the corresponding screen name I chose is "pat"; with TB2 typing "pat" always resulted in the right thing;  now the right address is on the 13th position, preceded by others that have nothing to do with Pat, and preceded by secondary addresses that, by their very definition, I should never use unless the corresponding primary ones are, for some reason, not working.

Comment 2

[Matt Krause]

As a result of this bug I've switched back to Mozilla 2.022.
I found myself sending messages to the wrong addressee.

I also went and tried SeaMonkey 2.02, but the same problem is there also.

Comment 3

[Roberto Bagnara]

[In reply to comment #1: In that comment I wrote "screen name" where I actually meant "nickname".  Here is the corrected version.  Sorry about that. ]

I think this is a serious misfeature.  IMHO, the addresses should be showed in
this order:

1) first the matching nicknames;
2) then the matching primary addresses;
3) then the matching secondary addresses;
4) then the addresses on the "collected" section of the address book.

Since when I upgraded to TB3 I keep sending emails to the wrong addresses... I
am too used to the right behavior.  For example, one of my coworkers is Pat and
the corresponding nickname I chose is "pat"; with TB2 typing "pat" always
resulted in the right thing;  now the right address is on the 13th position,
preceded by others that have nothing to do with Pat, and preceded by secondary
addresses that, by their very definition, I should never use unless the
corresponding primary ones are, for some reason, not working.

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

The sort order of primary and additional is a clear regression from TB 2.

I have raised bug 543088 as a "clean" bug which just deals with the regression from TB 2.

Enhancements to the existing order (which is primarily based on frequency) can be filed as separate bugs but should not be put on existing bugs which only serves to confuse the issues to other bugs.

Marking this as a duplicate of bug 543088 as that bug will now deal with this in a clean way.