Re: [Evolution-hackers] Search in message/Find in message

[guenther <guenther rudersport de>]

> > At least my (personal) use case for "searching" does not involve
> > "Search in Message". In fact, IIRC I used it about 2 times during all
> > those years I'm very actively using and supporting Evolution. The
> > average Mail isn't that large, that I cannot easily spot what I'm
> > looking for inside the mail.
> 
> If you are on any development mailing lists, where lots of large patches
> get mailed around, you would use it all the time.

So you do know what lists I'm subscribed to? ;)  I just mentioned my
habits -- yes, including developer mailing lists and patches.

Which makes me wonder about the "target user". There already where a
couple of changes aiming at some average (or below) user. So are we
shifting focus back to the hacker type of user, wading through
gazillions of large patches? I'm not happy with everything either
(including changes), but I'm not in a position to decide about this...

Considering and deciding about UI changes with an impact like this would
be a task for Anna's team. (Anna, listening? :)


Anyway, given that my response was the first in over a week, it seems
that most hackers either don't consider this an issue or are pretty much
annoyed by all the discussions about UI changes lately... :/


> > Ctrl-F in the Mail Component is Forwarding a message. It has been like
> > that for a long time (always?), and it definitely should not change
> > (read: break) for the users.
> 
> Well, if your goal is to have anything resembling a usable integrated
> desktop, you cannot force the user to remember a different shortcut for
> the same action depending on which window they are in.  It just makes it
> look like the left hand is not talking to the right.  Why have HIGs at
> all?
> 
> (I'm going to ignore the emacs argument, because the people doing the UI
> work on Evo clearly aren't targeting that segment with their recent
> changes.)
> 
> The reality is that every web browser (including some that don't run on
> Linux) uses ctrl-F.  So the options I see are:
> 
>   1. convince every other browser to change to Ctrl-S
>   2. force the user to keep track of context sensitive key bindings
>   3. make Ctrl-F 'find in message' like everyone else
> 
> Why can't 'f' just forward?  It's not bound to anything.  Shift-Ctrl-F
> could work too.

GTK+ >= 2.6 hijacks keystrokes without modifier (while the focus is on a
tree at least) for quick lookahead search. Yes, this did break '.' and
',' already, which used to work without switching focus to the mail
list...

Shift-Ctrl-F for Forward would make sense. Just like Shift-Ctrl-R for
Reply-To-All, both not used as often as Reply, so the additional
modifier would be fine.


> 'Find' in the current document is a universal action, I think it's
> critical for desktop usability that it work the way users expect it to
> and consistently across all apps.  Forwarding a message is only
> applicable in a mail client anyway, so it seems less important to be
> consistent with other apps.

...guenther


-- 
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