[dev] Autocomplete on compose message

[Nuno Loureiro]

Hi!

Regarding the discussion on IRC about this subject, I made a patch to
create an iframe in compose.php with a select with the contacts. This
select is filled after the user has typed 2 chars in the To: field.
Then, it presents a list after 3 chars (the autocomplete stuff) typed.

I'm having some problems to communicate between the 2 pages (compose.php
and the one in the iframe). The problem I have occurs when the user
types too fast the first three chars, or when the search in the
directory takes too long. This is only working in mozilla right now,
although it probably doesn't work in IE because a line of code.

The patch agains HEAD and the 2 added files are here:
http://nuno.uncovering.org/autoc.tgz

If someone can take a look at this and find out the problem I'd really
appreciate it.

Anyway, I think the first solution I presented (a la Eudora) is more
useful. Its target users are the ones that have a private address book
and just would like to have autocompletion of their most used contacts.
Isn't this the more common scenario of people that run any email client?

I would like you to try both and hope you reconsider your opinion.
I vote for my first solution, not because I didn't do the second one
successfully, but because I did the first one that way because I though
it would be the more reasonable solution. I might agree to load that
quick address book in an iframe (so it loads in background), and that
would be the only change I would do. Anyway, it's just my opinion and
would like some feedback about it.

Thank you very much.
Best Regards,

   Nuno Loureiro

On Mon, 2003-07-14 at 14:25, Chuck Hagenbuch wrote:
> Quoting Nuno Loureiro <nuno at co.sapo.pt>:
> 
> > I'm not sure if I understood correctly what you want. You want the drop
> > down only when the onblur event occurs?
> 
> Right. Just like the current aut-expand code; just do a search when the user
> tabs/clicks out of the field. That way you don't load *nearly* as many
> addresses into javascript, it'll be quicker, but still very useful.
> 
> > Anyway, I have a sugestion. I think Jan gave me a similiar sugestion in
> > the past. I could do like in auto-expand, i.e., load the list of
> > addresses in background in an iframe. This list would be created after
> > the user typed the first char in To: or Cc: or Bcc: field. This list is
> > a list of records started by such letter and that means records which
> > first name or last name or email start by that letter.
> 
> This is still a potentially huge number, and precludes effectively using
> something like a school-wide directory in your lookups. If you do a search on
> more complete strings, you'll do much better with large directories.
> 
> -chuck
> 
> --
> Charles Hagenbuch, <chuck at horde.org>
> The alligators were there, too, in a bathtub inside the house.
-- 
Nuno Loureiro <nuno at co.sapo.pt>
PTM.com - http://www.sapo.pt/
PGP fingerprint = 8A32 5174 E80C 2D40 9075 405E C107 6592 054A 4D05