[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Views: search behavior (was Re: [PATCH sugar] Views: move the ViewToolbar to the HomeWindow instead of having one in each View)

[Gary Martin]

Hi Simon,

On 28 Aug 2012, at 14:12, Simon Schampijer <simon at schampijer.de> wrote:

> On 08/28/2012 02:14 PM, Manuel Quiñones wrote:
>> So now the filtering is shared between the three views.  I think this
>> is worth noting in the commit message.
> 
> Thanks for the review and catching this! I did note it in the commit message before pushing.
> 
> Gary, we did discuss the following:
> 
> There seem to be three options how the search now that we have a search entry in each view could work:
> 
> - if you did a search in View A and then switch to View B the entry will be cleared leaving you with no search applied in B
> 
> - if you did a search in View A and then switch to View B the search from A will be applied to B (behavior which landed in 0.97.2)
> 
> - if you did a search in View A and then switch to View B the search from A will not be applied in B, if you switch back to A the search you did before in A has been cached and is still applied (behavior before 0.97.2)

Thanks for raising this change! I'll need to give it some more though and test the patches.

My gut reaction so far would be for the clearing behaviour, second choice would be the caching behaviour. My reasons against the 0.97.2 behaviour change would be that different views contain dissimilar enough objects that a search in one is not often useful in another (e.g. searching for a buddy or access point, and switching to home), and that will drop the user in an unexpected UI state. A reason for clearing the search when switching views is that it prevents issues for novice users who leave a query in place unintentionally, and return to find a view in an unexpected state without realising they need to clear the old search query manually. Though so far, caching previous search queries in a view is just what we've been doing in the shell. FWIW: home list view is the worst offender as it shows a blank white canvas when a query has no matches, should really behave like the Journal with the 'No matching entries' UI. The 0.97.2 change may well lead to an increase in "my icons are all grey/gone" type support reports, especially from young users who may randomly press keys and generate a shel query without realising it.

Regards,
--Gary

> Regards,
>   Simon