944942 - Quick Filter Bar search delay should be longer or configurable (premature search on unfinished word takes long in big folders)

Status: REOPENED

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Description

[u491341]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130910160258

Steps to reproduce:

I got some folders with 15'000+ messages and quick search over them is very slow (I do not search the body, just subject, receiver and sender).


Actual results:

Very slow search. This is just because of lack of any delay between pressing keys. For example, I try to search term "Intel" and it first searches "I" (quite few  secs, about ten), then "In" (a bit faster), then "Int" etc etc - every time a bit faster. When copy/paste the same term search is instant.


Expected results:

Would be nice to introduce a configurable delay between keypresses. After clearing (deleting) quick search phrases there is no need for delay of course.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Martin,

How big are the indexes for these folders?  (.msf files)
Is this on a laptop with 5400rpm drive?
Does it happen also in Thunderbird safe mode?  (Help | restart ...)

Comment 2

[u491341]

Total size ~120MB largest beeing 27mb, total 187 .msf files.

It is over RAID1 over two WD 10K 500GB drives.

I noticed search is faster when moving mouse around.

Hope it helps.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to marrtins from comment #2)
> ...
> I noticed search is faster when moving mouse around.

odd

Start *Windows'* safe mode with networking enabled
- win7 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Start-your-computer-in-safe-mode
Still In Windows safe mode, start thunderbird in safe mode
- http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/safe-mode

Does problem go away?

Comment 4

[Phoenix]

marrtins?

Comment 5

[u491341]

It is searching faster probably due upgrade to SSD or just more decent TB version. However, some little timeout after pressing keys would be great.

Comment 6

[Phoenix]

Please create new bug with enhancement request, closing this as wfm

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

perhaps we should reopen this?

It's not helped by bug 1055077 (which is much newer than this bug)

Comment 8

[Filipus Klutiero]

I have also been experimenting an unresponsive quick filter UI for years, and this persists even now that my profile is stored on an SSD. marrtins, is your request here to make the quick filter UI more responsive, changing the delay being a suggested solution, or is this a request to specifically increase / allow increasing the delay, as the title set by Thomas D. indicates?

In the latter case, is there a ticket simply asking to increase the UI's responsiveness?

Comment 9

[u491341]

I did not notice UI's unresponsiveness rather I think it's just slow search for a single char over thousands of messages. Small delay (possibly configurable) would solve this so search starts only when full term is entered.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

reopening for now

> In the latter case, is there a ticket simply asking to increase the UI's responsiveness?

that's bug 1055077. please do not comment there unless you are contributing a patch.

Comment 11

[Filipus Klutiero]

I do not oppose to what is requested by this ticket's summary, but I reported the general unresponsiveness problem I was referring to in Comment 8 in ticket #1284753.

Comment 13

[alta88]

Quickfilter power users may find [TotalQuickFilter](https://bitbucket.org/alta8888/totalquickfilter) useful:
- configurable minimum character length before a search starts
- configurable search start delay
- search does not start for quoted text until the ending quote is entered

Comment 16

[Steve]

I reported bug 1649973, sorry for the duplicate.
This is a better description of the performance issue than I wrote in frustration last night.
I think there should be a button to begin the quicksearch, and no effort to notice what was typed in the search terms should be noticed until that button or a return is pressed.

Comment 17

[Steve]

There ought to be a stop searching button with the start searching button to begin the quicksearch.
If you use a term that is common the search can be very time consuming and there is no way to stop it, especially if you have many messages.
I had to use taskmanager to stop the Thunderbird process after 5 minutes. I had found what I was looking for but the search could not be stopped and the rotating wait indicator was rotating. This is a waste of time. Windows 10. Thunderbird 68.7.0 (32-bit)
I wasn't able to find a 64 bit version when I looked. Does one exist?

Comment 18

[steve hayes]

This seems to me to have been fixed years ago and now it's back. I guess somebody has shortened the delay between when the user starts typing their string and when search commences. Again? If you find it please comment it nice and big so someone doesn't do it yet again. Thanks

Comment 19

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Steve from comment #17)

There ought to be a stop searching button with the start searching button to begin the quicksearch.

Just edit the quick search field and blank it out?

(In reply to steve hayes from comment #18)

This seems to me to have been fixed years ago and now it's back.

Nothing in the code has changed recently.

Comment 20

[steve hayes]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Maybe there's an interrupt on a keypress which has been altered? I don't know, but I am utterly certain that this was a problem, then it was fixed, and now the same symptoms/problem is back, and it really is a problem, 10s of seconds lost multiple times a day

I have a small screen recording on https://photos.app.goo.gl/nnyn8qCC5a9DGXx1A

Comment 23

[Steve]

This serious bug has been languishing for eight years. I just posted a duplicate in frustration. I didn't remember the last time.

Comment 24

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Version 128 does have an increased delay. Does it perform well for you?