All Packages - should not show featured list

[Paradoxon]

If you choos all Packages you dont get a list of all packages but instead you just get a list from 5-6 featured Packages. This is confusing and not what i would expect from the menu entry. There should be a extra Menu entry "featured" packages All Packages should do what it says ... show All Packages :).

[humdinger]

It's a difficult issue. You may want to browse the list of all games or video apps, but wading through a 1,000+ entry list is not practical. Contrary to the other categories, "All packages" is really only useful for an unlimited search over everthing. And as soon as you enter a string in the search term box, the featured packages are replaced with the search results.

HaikuDepot could start with a "meta-category" "Featured packages", but then you'd always have to click the menu to switch to another category. Annoyance...

The "Featured" start screen was introduced, so the user isn't greeted with a blank screen (loading every package info may become slow) and, more importantly, is informed of the most liked apps.

How it's currently done isn't perfect, admittedly. How about this:

The "Featured packages" could be the label for a new checkbox below the "Search terms" text box. When starting up, it's activated, filtering "All packages" to only the "Featured". As soon as you start typing in the search field, the checkbox is deactivated, the "featured filter" is removed and your search results are shown.
Re-enabling the featured checkbox, clears (or ghosts the contents of) the textbox, and shows the featured packages again.
The category is taken into account, so you can also limit the featured packages to that.

Maybe having a radio widget with search box and featured setting, instead of a checkbox would be even better...

[vidrep]

Ticket #11405 is related to this issue.

[stippi]

It doesn't say "All packages" it says "All categories" and the item is in the "Category:" drop-down. Thus, the featured packages list shows you the featured packages from all categories.

I agree with what humdinger said in comment:1 and thought along the same lines. I have made the Featured packages list a persistent option in the "Show" menu (renamed from "Option") and additionally the list automatically switches from showing only featured packages to search results from all packages as soon as something is typed into the search field. With an empty search box, the "only featured" setting can be combined with any of the other settings. This accomplishes the following: The default settings are sane in the Show menu (including the decision to show only featured packages by default, and not all (potentially thousands of) packages) and searching finds "unfeatured" packages without the user having to toggle a setting first.