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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: Search Dialog
From:       Ingo =?iso-8859-1?q?Kl=F6cker?= <kloecker () kde ! org>
Date:       2004-01-08 0:22:12
Message-ID: 200401080122.18265 () erwin ! ingo-kloecker ! de
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On Tuesday 30 December 2003 14:53, Thomas Zander wrote:
> Here is a proposal for the new search dialog; its a designer file,
> but as you can't use it as is, I created a screenshot instead.

Thanks for the proposal. It's good to have something before our eyes so 
we can better talk about it.

First impression: The search dialog looks much less cluttered which is 
mainly due to the usage of boxes. Good.

> I renamed 'search all local folders' to 'all folders' since the
> current dialog does not limit itself to local folders either, IMAP
> folders are also searched.

Looks good.

> Fewer: should remove empty conditions first, last one if none are
> empty. Fewer: will remove entries until 1 is left.

That's reasonable.

> Clear all: brings up a 'don't ask again' dialog and clears all
> entries afterwards; resetting count to 2.

For about (95+epsilon)% of all searches that I do I only need 1 
condition. IMO we should default to 1 condition.

> Save as...: will bring up a dialog as in the second attachment.

I like this a lot better than current solution (which confused me a lot 
when I used it for the first time although I knew exactly what it 
should do). The only thing that's missing is a way to open (i.e. jump 
to) the folder with the result of the search.

> The checkbox "I'm an Expert' will make the conditions combo-boxes be
> filled with more entries; as is shown in the right side of the
> screeny. Notice that the editable-combobox will have a lot more
> entries in the expert mode as well.

I'm not sure I like this checkbox. On one hand it would be nice to be 
able to remove some of the options that normal users probably don't 
need (e.g. reg. exp. matching). OTOH, it's not at all clear (to the 
user) that checking "I'm an Expert" will give him more possibilities. 
So I'm undecided, but I see that a reduced set of options would be 
beneficial for the non-geek.

Another improvement would be to only show the numerical comparison 
operators (is greater than, etc.) for numerical fields, e.g. for <size 
in bytes> and <age in days>. On the same time "contains", etc. 
shouldn't be shown for numerical comparison. Also for <status> only 
"is" and "is not" should be shown. With this approach the comparison 
operator drop down box would already be less cluttered even in expert 
mode. The only thing the expert mode would change is showing/hiding the 
two reg.exp. options.

A thing that's currently missing is a way to specify that a search 
condition should be case-sensitive. This could be solved by a small 
button with the (translatable) labels [A=a] and [A!=a] (where != would 
be a crossed out '=').

> I wrote (in the second attachment) that the _result_ of the search is
> saved in the search folder. I wrote this since I can't find a way to
> re-run a search. But that seems silly; so did I just miss the option?

Search folders are dynamically updated. So re-running a saved search 
without changing the search conditions is unnecessary. If you want to 
re-run a saved search with changed search conditions then you have to 
search the corresponding search folder. We have to add an appropriate 
menu entry to the context menu of search folders.

More thoughts:
- I don't like the removal of the status bar. It's nice to see what 
happens especially if multiple folders are searched so that one can try 
to estimate when the search will be completed. IMO some way to give 
feedback to the user is necessary. A separate progress dialog would be 
too obtrusive. So a status bar seems to be the best solution.

- Now a radical thought:
Let's remove the search results list view from the search dialog. The 
search folders are so much better for doing something with the search 
result than the tiny search result list view. At the same time we could 
get rid of the "Save as" or "Rename" or whatever stuff because I think 
it will feel much more natural to the user to simply rename the search 
dialog (maybe add a "Rename" entry to the search folder context menu). 
It's debatable when the search folder should be selected. Should it be 
selected as soon as the search started? Or should we add a button "Show 
search results"? I think the latter is the better approach.

- Move the buttons from the right to the bottom of the dialog. 
Reasoning: The search dialog is too wide. In some languages (e.g. 
French; there's a bug report about it) it's much too wide. The 
translators can't do much about it. English expressions are almost 
always among the shortest expressions in all languages which use Latin 
characters. I heard that Microsoft designed their GUI so that it looks 
good in German (because German expressions seem to be among the longest 
expressions). "If a dialog isn't too big in German, then it will be 
okay in all other languages, too."

I'm looking forward to your comments.

Regards,
Ingo

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