660555 - Allow quick search to use server-side queries for headers as well as body

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[dmiller]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1
Build Identifier: 3.1.10

Like clients, IMAP servers have continued to develop and add functionality.  Some servers include advanced search capabilities.  In particular, the combination of Dovecot and Apache Solr is an extraordinarily powerful solution.  Queries of huge mailboxes can be done in moments.

Existing functionality of Dovecot + Solr (and others) provides for a full text search of bodies, headers, or any combination.  The Thunderbird Quick Search uses a server-side IMAP query for body searches - but does not do so for headers.  Possible changes include:

1.  Add a button in the Quick Search widget for "Server-Side Headers".
2.  Add a checkbox in the Quck Search widget for "Server-Side Searching".
3.  Add an option under Accounts/Server Settings to enable Server-Side Header searching.

Much of Thunderbird seems to be geared towards offline reading - yet many users prefer using Thunderbird as an on-line IMAP reader.  It would be extremely beneficial to see support for more server-side features, instead of trying to implement them solely in the client.

Reproducible: Always