A direct "Show special" button is VERY important to me. Sometimes I am using it hundreds of times a day.
It also MUST remember the last used values.
So in 6.x, "Show special" was hidden at the bottom of a scroll list, and now it does not even work anymore two times in a row - a dummy month range has to be used before it can be used again. But then it does not preserve the last entered values.
"Reload from disk" seems to be the same as "Show special" - maybe not by its functionality, but from the point of view of a user - not sure about its speed, though.
But still, "Reload from disk" also does not preserve the last used values. It is very important that it (or direct "Show special" button) does.
And if a certain month range was used before "Show special/Reload from disk" - perhaps have the values used for that month entered there. Or the values after "Load newer/Load older".
So that "Show special" always has the last used range already in, ready to be modified.
5.x had it right - "Show special" could be used any times you wanted to, and it opened with the last used values already typed in.
I don't know if there are some underlying data handling issues preventing the normal functionality of "Show special" in 6.x, or it is done just to drive me crazy...
BTW, there is no reason to show an error message if "From" number is lower than "To" number. Just swap them automatically for God's sake. Let us enter the range in any order without having to think each time what the right order is.
I hope I was polite enough, considering how frustrating it is not having the proper "Show special" button
Actually, my pretty frequent usage of "Show special" often (but not always) goes together with the global search: search globally, then open locally a very narrow range and download.
Perhaps this practice is no longer necessary in 6.x.
In 5.x - if you download something from global search directly - then those posts are not marked as downloaded in the local group tab opened later.
Perhaps 6.x is smarter in this respect.