Comment 39 for bug 691380

Alright Mike, we are now sufficiently aware that you and your company were happy with the old combined quick/global search. It's easy to imagine others weren't, even if I am not aware of statistical evidence in numbers (and have commented on that problem elsewhere). Still, please accept that the new quicksearch bar is something that other users (not only power users) will find useful, as it exposes valuable functionality at your fingertips that was hidden or not even available before (don't forget the other filter buttons like tags, attachments, unread etc. on the filter bar). E.g., only new qf bar will let you filter for messages that do or do not have a certain tag (yes, and it's not perfect and leaves a lot to be desired).

As a volunteer in bug triage, I personally agree with some of the problems that you raised, but things aren't as simple as your comments seem to suggest. The proposal of unifying global and quick search has been around since the inception of global search (and we have open bugs for that); fact is, though, that they have just been deliberately separated. So new quick search bar is certainly there to stay. And we're exploring ideas here how to add on that and make it better.

(In reply to comment 31)
Charles, thanks for providing more detailed explanation of envisioned UI in comment 31, although a mockup screenshot says more than many words... *sigh*
I'll post one right now...