I like being able to type the name of a node in netbeans explorer to get to the
file quickly. This works very well with files and reasonably well with logical
nodes (e.g. "Important Files" in nb module). The problem is that with package
names this is unusable when all packages start with the same - very long - prefix.

One idea would be to look for packages name postfix from where the individual
packages in explorer start to differ. For example:

MyProject
  Source Packages
    org.myproject.foo
    org.myproject.huh
    org.myproject.ui.foo
    org.myproject.ui.bar
    org.myproject.ui.blah

typing ui would select the 3rd package.

Another idea is to use automagical completion. When I type "o" in this case I
would immediately get "org.myproject." because there is nothing else starting
with "o".

Not sure about the right component (maybe depends on the selected solution).
Marking as a bug, bcs I think this is a usability problem for people who like
using keyboard.