Comments on: Quick Filtering in Thunderbird

By: EH

EH — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:28:21 +0000

Oddly, there is no hot-key combination for Quick Filter, so you have to click the little icon every time you want it to appear or disappear. User-hostile.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:08:04 +0000

I haven’t even seen the Quickfilter Toolbar in a long time, ever since Iago developed the Unified_Search extension, that brings back the simple SearchBox from TB 3.0, but also incorporates the goodness of the Quickfilter Toolbar functionality… and the latest update seems to have fixed the minor quirkiness with the SearchBox not auto-clearing, missing labels for the Search Criteria, and the Search Criteria getting out of sync with the Quickfilter Criteria…

https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/thunderbird/addon/unified-search-187593/

But be sure to install the latest version (0.6.3) which, if it isn’t available on AMO (above) yet, can be found in Iago’s site here:

https://github.com/IagoSRL/TBX-Unified-Search/downloads

By: Complaint Leader

Complaint Leader — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:47:32 +0000

I love the Quick Filter, unfortunately it’s been fairly unusable (to me) ever since this new fancy search was introduced, and it’s become even worse with the latest update.

Why do I use such harsh words? I use a horizontal layout: folders on the left, then list of mails in the current folder, then the current mail. To me this appears to be the most efficient layout for the widescreen laptop I’m using. The Quick Filter bar places itself inside the second column where the current mail folder is displayed. Seems logical.

In which way was it unusable until recently? The quick filter bar used to consist of a few icons, then some horizontal free space, then the search box. The free space pushed the search box so far to the right that its contents were not visible. I could still click on it and enter search terms, but I couldn’t see what I had typed.

In which way did it become worse? In the latest update, Thunderbird’s developers in their infinite wisdom (forgive me, but this type of changes I will never understand) decided to label the formerly unadorned icons. This made the width of the quick search bar blow up, which, given the above description, of course meant that I don’t even see the search box displayed anymore. In other words, the quick search has become completely useless to me, unless I change my layout which would mean wasting valuable screen real estate.

By: Peter Lairo

Peter Lairo — Thu, 12 May 2011 08:56:46 +0000

Yes, *Mozilla* rocks. But Thunderbird: not anymore. IMO Thunderbird development and management has been very poor for the past recent years. Case in point: the Quick Filter should never have been removed and replaced by Global Search. The Unified Search add-on should not have been made necessary; it should have been implemented into Thunderbird itself.

The *unforced* decline of Thunderbird is a real tragedy (especially for someone who has followed its development from the very beginning).

By: garage door repair cypress

garage door repair cypress — Wed, 11 May 2011 00:48:39 +0000

it took me a long time but mozilla rocks. never looked back

By: Peter Lairo

Peter Lairo — Sun, 01 May 2011 16:33:54 +0000

The add-on is called “Unified Search” and can be found here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/unified-search-187593/

By: webdesigner

webdesigner — Sun, 01 May 2011 15:18:49 +0000

there’s actually an add on now. (btw… in firefox is the loading gif off)

By: Peter Lairo

Peter Lairo — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:59:37 +0000

The Quick Filter add-on for Thunderbird seems to have vanished from addons.mozilla.org – at least the link in this article doesn’t go to it (anymore?), and a search at addons.mozilla.org yields no success.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:14:22 +0000

Hi,
I love the new quick filter, but it there any way to make it search on all folders? (I think that if it doesn’t find anything and you press Enter it will search on all folders, but I want to search (always) on all folders)

thanks

By: Very fast search and filter – Thunderbird’s Quick Filter bar « rahul gaitonde dot org

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:56:19 +0000

[...] a post by Bryan Clark of the Thunderbird team about the bar (from back when, I suppose, it was an [...]

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:28:16 +0000

Oh – and why did you post a broken link, saying it was a broken link?

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:27:39 +0000

Why? As one who knows most of the pitfalls, I’m happy to help you with any issues you might be having…

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:45:32 +0000

Broken link.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/77714

Just so you know, my inadvertent upgrade to thunderbird 3 has ruined my night.

By: Fernando García Iglesias

Fernando García Iglesias — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:17:07 +0000

Hi Charles,

I have tried to find a message sent with BCC but it isn’t found. Look this video (http://www.artaiz-asesoria.es/aat/quickfilter.zip). First I choose a message in the Enviados (this is the Spanish for Sent) folder. The message is sent with BCC to miguel@avansuite.es. Then I write “miguel” in the Quick filter search window and the message is not shown anymore until I press the cross to clear the search window.

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:24:08 +0000

@Everyone who hates the new Quickfilter toolbar.

Thomas D has coded an awesome interactive mockup for my bug 570815 requesting an optional standalone searchbox like the old one in 2.0/3.0, please check it out (and tell your friends to go vote for it if you like it):

https://bug570815.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=460747

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:19:31 +0000

@Fernando

BCC is a recipient, and as long as you have the recipient option enabled, it will find them.

If you experience something different, please provide more precise details on how to reproduce the problem.

By: Fernando García Iglesias

Fernando García Iglesias — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:16:59 +0000

Wouldn’t be possible to filter by BCC field? I send all my messages using BCC as default and with the new filter tool, I need to open the search window to find them.

By: Frank Steiner

Frank Steiner — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:05:13 +0000

Feeling so much the same…
The author of the “unified search” plugin said he intends to write another addon allowing to hide the quick filter bar completely and performing all filtering from the global search box in the button bar. Likely not with a dropdown but with a pop-up like proposed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=570815

I guess some feedbacks on his unified search together with support for his idea for the new addon (see my review of the unified search plugin on the mozilla addon page and his answer) will help him keep going

Btw, we plan to buy new laptops for our chair. All the new T-series Thinkpads in 14″ or 15″ now have 1440×900 screens. This is 150px less than the old Thinkpad T60 in 1400×1050.

I wonder if the mozilla team ever tried Thunderbird on a laptop screen with 900px height. Along with the new “great” buttons in the header and the completely useless tab bar with the quick search bar you might still be able to see 3 or 4 lines of the message body, so I guess we need another new feature to hide the mail body completely! Maybe we could make a new separate toolbar for the gloda below the normal button bar… hmm…

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:29:47 +0000

Hi,
Today I made the “mistake” to upgrade my TB to the last version 3.1. And surprisingly, I had discovered this “improvement”. I use for my every day work one laptop and as a consequence I don’t have to much space to waste on my screen, therefore this new “feature” I consider it as a BUG. Therefore this evening I have downgraded my TB to 3.0(In my opinion the best version so far for laptops!)
I have liked the previous version with pop-up menu, on the same search box. I don’t think that separating the search function in 2,3 separate tabs reconfigured to perform the same function with different settings could be called optimization(because someone don’t like pop-up menus) except if we believe in Murphy laws ( ~ when improved, things tend to go beyond the point of practical usability ~ )
This “improvement” is just aligning itself in the queue with the one with icons in message header – who had that great idea should stop drinking -. Now, with the latest release, we have 2 function duplicated twice, just as improvement
I always liked TB because of its versatility. You’ve always got one blank software and you were able to customize it with different addons. Unfortunately, starting from this year most of releases from Mozilla had included a lot of addons inside of the “blank” delivery, limiting our configuration’s options

By: alain

alain — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:09:25 +0000

Thanks for the tip. It works. Rather stupid problem, but what it shows is that the help facility is not what it should be. Some more efforts on this side to ease the use of the mailer and its tools would be good.