91016 - Search UI: remove the "Delete" button

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Håkan Waara]

I am using the Search functionality more and more these days, and there's one
thing that makes me nervous when I think about the current Search UI: the
ability to remove a found message.

Why is this implemented in the first place? Since when is the search results
pane supposed to be a place where you can organize (and thus delete) messages?

What do you other people feel about this feature?

Comment 1

[scottputterman]

I don't think there's anything wrong with using the search window to organize. 
Search allows people to find messages that they care about. Why they care about
them or what they do with them shouldn't be up to us to decide.  I don't
remember if undo works in search, but if it doesn't, it should at some point.

Comment 2

[jglick]

I agree some users will be upset if the Delete functionality is removed.

Comment 3

[Håkan Waara]

I don't think we should make the Search window an environment to customize your
mailbox in. That is what the 3pane is all for.

In the search message you search for messages. End of story.

When you start adding additional stuff to the window, that's when you start
bloating it and putting in features that are not really relevant to the core
feature of that window.

Jglick: IMHO that's not a valid reason for having it there. We should design a
good application, and whatever we do "some users will be upset". Changes like
this is especially important before an 1.0 release.

Let's for a second think what the Search window is initially added to do -- why
do we have a search window? Naturally, most users would answer: to search my
messages. Not to edit them (deletion is one kind of edit).

Comment 4

[Alex Bishop]

What if I want to delete all messages from a particular sender, but the messages
are spread across many different folders? Then it's really handy to be able to
delete the messages listed in the search results right from the search window.

Comment 5

[jglick]

I didn't mean by my comment that we should keep it just just to appease users. I 
meant that some users actually find this functionality useful and rely on it. I 
don't see the value in removing a feature some users find helpful.

If the UI was such that it was easy to accidentally delete search results, I 
could see your point. But the UI isn't designed that way. 

Comment 6

[scottputterman]

Being able to organize messages is a core feature of search.  For example,
Netscape 6.0 shipped without any of these organizing features and lots of people
complained that we'd made search worthless.  If you can't do anything with the
messages you searched for, then what's the point?

As I said earlier, if all you want to do is search, you are welcome to do that,
but that doesn't mean that other people won't want to do more.

Comment 7

[timeless]

I expect to be able to delete based on a search. I might want to delete all 
messages containing inappropriate content or various other things.  In reality 
i'm finding more and more of these search bugs as reasons that i'd want search 
to be just a virtual folder in the 3 pane view.

Comment 8

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

delete from search is very useful.  

I strongly agree with all the good reasons others have given.

marking wontfix.

Comment 9

[Håkan Waara]

Ok, I can see the points you all have made... Thanks for the input.