[dreamcompiler]

The two search boxes is bizarre. It feels like two rival programmers each wrote a half-baked search feature and rather than management telling them "Unify your two approaches", instead they said "Just throw them both in there and let the user figure out which one they want."

[1718627440]

There aren't two search boxes. There is a search box in/below the titlebar and a filter for the current folder.

[justsomehnguy]

And if there were two driving wheels in your car, a one for turning right and an other one for turning left you would say there is no two driving wheels in your car.

[1718627440]

A filter is different from searching. It only works on the current directory, it alters the view after it has been generated. You can also use it on a search.

Don't know about others, but I find the functionality useful and use them for different purposes. Searching is when I want to find random messages, where I don't know where or from when there are, the filter is for bulk processing and narrowing the current working set, beside the conversation level.

It is more like the steering wheel and choosing forward/reverse, sure both are for choosing the driving direction, but they operate at different levels and are used in different situations. I mean you could use the steering wheel for forward/backward if you want to. Using the gear to change the direction less than 180° is quite difficult, but not impossible.

[justsomehnguy]

You are just trying to confirm your beliefs.

Thing is, the 'filter' box can work as a filter and as a search box. It's even a simple heuristic if it should behave as a filter or switch to the search - if there is no result for the text entered in the textbox then switch to the search.

There is zero need to have two search boxes, it's just Mozilla wanted to copy-paste the idiotic solution of MS Office with a top-most search function. That's all.

[1718627440]

Ok?

Do you ever only use one of find and grep? I think they are very similar as the search and the filter bar. I mean you can replace find with tree | grep, not sure about the other way around, but it's probably also possible.

> There is zero need

I do, so it is not exactly zero and I would be annoyed to have them gone, because it is a huge time saver when handling thousands of messages.

> if there is no result for the text entered in the textbox then switch to the search

If the filter starts to draw in messages from other directories, that would be stupid and kind of defeats the point of having a filter in a first place. If you want that why don't you use the search?

> it's just Mozilla wanted to copy-paste the idiotic solution of MS Office with a top-most search function

I don't care where the search bar is placed and I think that functionality did already exist before the current UI, either via ^K or in a menu. I (maybe) do agree with you, in that I don't like putting widgets in window frames (that's for the WM) and prefer classical (CUA-like) menubars.

Can you please criticize the functionality itself? I can't comprehend why you don't see the point of a separate filter. Do you mostly keep messages in the INBOX?

Maybe my original word choice wasn't optimal, because you can consider filtering a subset of searching, but I do consider them to be different. If you rather you use a different terminology, that's fine, but I don't think it will change my point.

[justsomehnguy]

> Do you ever only use one of find and grep?

It's not a CLI. More so, redundant functions eats the screen real estate, which isn't getting taller on a non-mobile platforms.

> I do, so it is not exactly zero and I would be annoyed to have them gone, because it is a huge time saver when handling thousands of messages.

You sounds like I'm advocating to removal of both the search and the filter boxes.

> If the filter starts to draw in messages from other directories

sigh

You input something in the combined search|filter box:

If you got the result you need from this folder then you just do your thing.

If you did not got the result you need then press Enter which would start the search in the whole mailbox, just like the search textbox works now.

> I don't care where the search bar is placed

Great for you, but I care. TB interface was already far from understandable by both computer illiterate and computer literate and this is just another illogical placement what doesn't add functionality, yet wastes the space.

BTW, did you provided the support to anyone by the phone? Can you be sure what the person on the other side inputs in the right textbox? I can, somewhat, if there is only one. If there are two then 70% of time they would use the wrong one even if telling you it's the right one. I provided enough L1/L2 to know it well.

> Can you please criticize the functionality itself

Yes, there is no functionality need in the two separate textboxes for, essentially, one function: searching.

> Do you mostly keep messages in the INBOX?

Thanks, no.

> because you can consider filtering a subset of searching, but I do consider them to be different

Yes, they both are the methods to find some message/s what you can't just scroll to. And those 'quick filter' buttons near the current filter textbox are quite nice, btw.

My problem is what that search textbox is a clear import from the MS Outlook[0] and it was did only to mimic the other product, without a second of actually thinking if this is even needed.

Just imagine: what if instead of that search box that space would be used for... a filter/search combo textbox, along with a quickfilter buttons, just like today, but not wasting the space for nothing in the window titlebar.

Also I finally noticed what there is even a special combo to invoke the filter so it also can be used to differentiate the usage right away: ctrl+shift+k - filtering, ctrl+shift+f - searching the mailbox.

Just for the sake of it I did a poor man's mock-up:

https://ibb.co/JjXwxhhB

And, uh, just one more thing: when you do search in TB you are brought to a separate tab with the search result. There is zero need to the search input to stay in the current search box. It's literally useless.

[0] if never even saw it then just search for the screenshots.

EDIT: and about 'heuristic' - there also two ways to do it:

1. just have a toogle buried somewhere, to enable/disable autosearch

2. just do the search automatically, with a low priority and find a way to notify the user what this are results from the other folder. Can be as simple as '--- results from the other folders ---' line.