[FEATURE REQUEST] Universal browse and search experience

[marcinkurek]

Please confirm these before moving forward.

• I have searched for my feature proposal and have not found a work-in-progress/duplicate/resolved/discarded issue.
• This proposal is a completely new feature. If you want to suggest an improvement or an enhancement, please use this template.

Describe the new feature

Proposal

I think the package browse and search could be improved by providing a unified view instead of 3 views (search/updates/installed) each with their own view state. It would not only unify the state of the search, but the filter sidebar as well.

Core ideas

The single package view would have an additional column displaying package state (ie. not installed, installed, updates available). It would also be possible to filter or group packages by this column.

It would display all installed and upgradeable packages by default. Once the search query is entered, it would display both non-installed and installed/upgradeable packages matching the query.

The 3 big buttons which now redirect to each view would stay, but instead of being separate pages, they would change the filters on the main view reflecting the existing functionality.

Closing thoughts

I appreciate that this is a huge ask and a huge feature that needs careful designing, or ends up not being feasible at all. I would love to attempt at contributing.

Describe how this new feature could help users

I often end up typing into the wrong search field and only realize after the results come up, and sometimes that can take a while.

I also sometimes search for a package in my installed packages, being sure that I have it, only to realize that it's not installed after all, and now I have to change the view and repeat the search.