Based on the way the search API works I don't think this is feasible. "dropb" is not a token that the system recognizes as being part of "dropbox" so I think dropb essentially returns no results. It would be nice if they had some sort of autocomplete functionality. That is how Google Instant works- it makes an educated guess at what your query will be and uses that rather than using the partial query. It's pretty effective much of the time.
Seems like ThriftDB is still in a pretty early stage of development so I doubt that they support this. But autocomplete is a solved problem so I'd be surprised if it doesn't make it in at some point.
Yeah I feel like you can't have true instant search without autocomplete. Lots of people don't realize that the reason Google's instant search is effective is that they can tell what you are going to type before you finish typing it. Autocomplete would be huge.
You guys can probably do a pretty effective version right now but I imagine data about what people are searching for allows you to create a better autocomplete feature. And that data only comes with time.
Seems like ThriftDB is still in a pretty early stage of development so I doubt that they support this. But autocomplete is a solved problem so I'd be surprised if it doesn't make it in at some point.