New search behavior using type-ahead search by default
As discussed in #244 (closed), I'd like to propose a solution to the controversial request to bring back type-ahead search to Nautilus. The goal of this issue is to find a compromise between the well known, fast and efficient type-ahead search that is deeply incorporated into the workflow of many professional users, and the, from a design perspective and for new users more reasonable looking recursive search.
Use cases
A lot of valid use cases for type-ahead search were already brought up in issue #244 (closed), also the popularity and the number of votes that issue gained speak for themselves.
Desired behavior
When users press a key without formally starting a search before, assume they are only searching for files in the current directory and use type-ahead search.
To communicate this to users, show a checkbox (or an icon) next to the search input field labelled "Search subfolders", it would be checked if we can assume the user wants a recursive search (eg. by clicking the search icon before or pressing ctrl+F), but would be unchecked in case she/he just starts typing.
Benefits of the solution
As already mentioned, this change would make a lot of users feel comfortable working with Nautilus again.
Type-ahead search has the benefits of being very fast and convenient without deflecting the users attention with ui updates too much, it greatly increases productivity for people navigating big directories a lot.
Another benefit is the added toggle for searching recursively: It would allow getting rid of the settings entry for searching subfolders and maybe replace it with an option to completely turn off type-ahead search.
Possible drawbacks
A change to the default behaviour of searching will obviously break someones workflow, but as long as type-ahead search can be turned off completely, no functionality will be lost.