914102 - contact search (on entering email address) does match email address from start only, should check matches within the full email address as well

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 529584

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Daniel]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130803215302

Steps to reproduce:

email address (autoadded to the contacts) is e.g.:
[e-mail]

on composing email, you start to write "kolo" to find the matching address, but thundberid only checks matches from start, so you need to start writing "max"


Actual results:

correct email address not offered


Expected results:

correct address (matched withing the string) offered

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Daniel, thanks for your worthwhile RFE.

Good news: There's a read-to-land patch in bug 529584 which will fix exactly this! :)

Bad news: It looks as if that patch will fail to get into next release of TB24 due to some missing tests and problems with the test environment, so we might only see this land in a year's time or so with next release. I've tried all in my power to advocate and get this in last minute (lastly in bug 529584 comment 71), but it has been futile. Perhaps some people are not sufficiently aware of the very bad ux effects of this current limitation (fully described in bug 558931), and the highly positive potential of improved search algorithm.

I suppose you could vote for these bugs using BMO's vote feature and invite your friends to do the same... ;)

Comment 2

[Daniel]

Thomas, thanks for your comments. I tried to search for it, but couldn't find it (this is another issue about search/UX of bugzilla :-) ).

I will vote for that bug for sure, this is the biggest pain in the ass of TB at the moment as it apparently furthermore does not count how much I use some address, but it still suggests some older, non-relevant one anymore (that a person used to have years ago).

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Daniel from comment #2)
> Thomas, thanks for your comments.

Most welcome.

> I tried to search for it, but couldn't
> find it (this is another issue about search/UX of bugzilla :-) ).
> 
> I will vote for that bug for sure,

To vote, use (vote) link to the right of "Importance" field on top of the respective bugs.

> this is the biggest pain in the ass of TB
> at the moment as it apparently furthermore does not count how much I use
> some address, but it still suggests some older, non-relevant one anymore
> (that a person used to have years ago).

Then you're also looking at bug 565465 and bug 325458.
Could you estimate how often you wrote to that person using the old address, compared to the new address?

Comment 4

[Daniel]

I have been using the second address for years (tens of emails) and probably used the first (old) address just few times. So, definitely the new address should take precedence.

I am sure that the fuzzy algorithm should work similar to this:
1) prefer (prioritize) the latest address used / matched (but weight the usage by number of emails sent)
2) gracefully degrade old address out of dropdown, if not used for longer than xxxx (or just move it to the bottom)
3) ...