[Eric Schoenfeld]

Search is only global if no projects are selected. I understand why - you want to allow constriction of search to specific projects.

But it's counter-intuitive for newbies. I kept searching for an action I knew existed but it wouldn't turn up....until I clicked in white space in the project panel to clear the selection.

One rough way out would be this: in search results page, if the search was constrained to specific projects, you present a statement (in fairly unobtrusive font) atop the results ala: "You have searched for XXX in the project/projects selected at left"

This will be really help newbie users who can't understand why they're getting no hits, as in the absence of search results this would be highly visible as the only text in the panel.