GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 517258
Search box requires non-intuitive keypress (as it is NOT "search as you type")
Last modified: 2021-05-19 12:28:31 UTC
Forwarding this from a downstream bug report: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=432636 I put the word "foo" in the text input box between "Search:" and the pulldown that says "Current Folder". For people that seldom use this feature, it might not be obvious that one needs to press "Enter" to actually perform the search. It is also probably not intuitive that one can click on the binoculars icon to change how the search is performed. After I change the selection from "Subject or Sender contains" to "Recipients contain", I would assume that the search has been performed. It took me several frustrated searches to figure out that I also need to press "Enter" in the text box in order to actually perform the search. evolution-2.12.3-1.fc8
I agree the current search UI has some issues. In defense of your second point about the UI, the tooltip over the binocular icon does say "Click here to change the search type". But your point is taken. All search UIs should have some kind of "do it" button that does the same as pressing Enter in the search entry. Other issues off the top of my head: - The "Body contains" option is useless if message previews are off. - "Edit -> Find in Message..." appears not to work until you finally notice the very subtle UI change that occurs. - The same search entry is used for searching for messages in folders and searching for text in messages. I find this confusing. I'd like to see Evolution adopt a Firefox-style search UI: - Hide the search UI until it's needed. - Have two different search bars: one that appears at the bottom of the message list pane and one that appears at the bottom of the message preview pane (like what we already have in the message window). - Make sure a "Find" button appears next to each search entry. - A bit radical: Make "Shift+Ctrl+F" a context-sensitive search key. It shows the appropriate search bar based on where the focus is. And make that always the case: the search bar should follow the focus until the user closes it. - Apply this to all components: Calendar, Contacts, Memos and Tasks.
Bumping version to a stable release.
I re-tested, and this is still a problem in evolution-2.25.91-1.fc11.x86_64.
Adding a reminder to myself to review my own suggestions above.
I think the search box needs the "search as you type" feature. I know this is hard on IMAP accounts but there should at least be the option for pop-users who are storing their emails locally. Almost every modern email-client has this feature and it's the main reason I use Thunderbird instead of Evolution...
The search box should be synced with Empathy etc. See bug 661564, and bug 668774 comment 2.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/Community/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new bug report ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.