Convert "From" dropdown menu in mail composer to a searchable popover
Migrated from https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=788893. Still an issue on 3.40.1.
Stephen 2017-10-12 17:11:05 UTC
At the moment, the "From" combobox doesn't support typing-based selection (i.e. focus the combobox and type the first few chars of an entry to select it).
This makes selecting an alternative account/alias slow (it requires visually searching through a list with either the keyboard or mouse).
Adding standard typing-selection wouldn't work well for the "From" combobox anyway, as some account/alias configurations would result in many entries that start identically (e.g. lots of address-only aliases, which would share the same default display name).
A searchable popover (see gedit's bottom syntax selector for an example) would be ideal in this case since it would search the entire alias text, allowing for rapid/blind account/alias selection:
- Click "From" (or focus and open via keyboard)
- type unique account/alias text
- Enter
Comment 1 Milan Crha 2017-10-12 17:30:06 UTC
Thanks for a bug report. Do you really have that many accounts+aliases, that the From combo is too long? I have many accounts configured, but most of them are disabled, thus they do not show in the From combo.
Currently, the accounts are sorted in the combo the same way as they are seen in folder tree, or in Edit->Preferences->Mail Accounts, then each of the accounts with aliases shows the aliases right below itself in the From combo, in the order as shown in the account Properties (which sorts them alphabetically, if I recall correctly).
Comment 2 Stephen 2017-10-12 17:43:54 UTC
That many aliases, yes :) 20+ - one per company/org I (actively) deal with... handy for pinpointing things like addresses being sold to mailing lists (and subsequently individually blockable :))
They're sorted, yes, so it's not a problem of difficulty to find/select them, just slowness, since it requires a visual scan.
They appear like this:
Display Name alias@example.com Display Name otheralias@example.com
etc.
So a "type first character" wouldn't be much use. But equally other users might want to search/select by display name, so I don't think it would be good to implement "type-select" based on the address instead, hence the searchable popover suggestion.