Thunderbird Quick Filter - Make Enter Key behavior configurable

[alexwi]

Posting here as suggested in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1915770 - If you vote here, kindly vote on bugzilla as well. Thank you!

I use the Quick Filter / Quick Search extensively.

In the past, pressing Enter after typing the search criteria would have no effect and the Quick-search would continue normally. Since a few versions ago, pressing Enter stops the quicksearch and takes the user to Global Search. In my case, that's never my intention - if it were, I would've pressed Ctrl-Shift-F in the first place. When I type things in the quick-filter field, I want to stay WITHIN the mailbox in which I'm doing the search and just have messages filtered, regardless of whether I press Enter.

Having used Thunderbird for years, muscle memory makes it very difficult to avoid this issue, so it would be great if this were a configurable setting.

Currently some kind soul created an add-on to get the old behavior back (see the discussion in bugzilla - link above), but it really should be a setting.

Thanks!

[lingho]

How many people actually agreed with Bug 526221? Doing a global search can easily be implemented by adding another button under Filter messages by: just like when we want to search the body of mails when search string is not found in Sender/Recipient/Subject. Pressing Enter to activate Global search is both non-intuitive and hidden as a function. Without looking at the bug, I would have no idea it now opens a new tab and perform a global search.

Hitting Enter at a search box is common on many other popular applications including Firefox. Can you imagine if a user types a search string in Firefox search box, hit Enter and see a new tab opened and does something that is not obvious?

[mrsimon0007]

Is there a way to make pressing Enter in Thunderbird’s Quick Filter stay within the current mailbox instead of switching to Global Search, or to add this as a configurable setting?

[NickDanger]

This change to the functionality of the quick filter box was a terrible idea, for multiple reasons. First, it violates the "principle of least astonishment" by unexpectedly changing the way it worked for years. I'd also argue that it's inconsistent with how most people expect search fields to work in general; at least speaking for myself, every one I've encountered, Enter == "run the search for the string I've entered" (they're effectively mini, purpose-specific command-line interfaces). And not even including an OPTION to revert to the original behaviour is the cherry on top -- if I wanted "daddy knows best, don't think for yourself" nonsense, I'd go use Apple software.