5

When someone has opened a dolphin window, an application launcher or for example the new applet manager which has integrated search features, typing something should make immediate use of the search feature. There is no reason to click on the searchbox to do that, since typing something without also pressing Ctl, Alt, etc can only mean "find everything that contains the letters i'm typing".

I agree regarding the applet manager (that's how it worked before), but not Dolphin. Focus should be in icon/listview, to allow fast navigation to folders etc. The same could be said about e.g. Kopete - the focus in main view makes it possible to quickly open a chat (without having to press tab; enter some letters and press enter).

So, -1 from me.

But the focus is still on the icon/listview, I'm not talking about integrating global search features on dolphin or kopete. I'm talking about integrating search on application specific context. For example, hitting the keys "Foo" on dolphin should present only (or at least highlight/present first) the files that contain "Foo" on the file list, instead of having to target and click the dolphin searchbox first.

That would be the filter bar, not the search bar. The filter bar limits the files you can see in a given folder, and appears at the bottom. The search bar is for searching your whole computer, and appears at the top by default.