203756 - Enable URLBar autofill with "browser.urlbar.autoFill" property

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[eric lindvall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030423 Mozilla Firebird/0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030423 Mozilla Firebird/0.6

This is a small change to enable the "browser.urlbar.autoFill" property to turn
on and off auto-fill on the urlbar.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:




This won't function properly without the patch from bug #203754:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=121989&action=view

Comment 1

[eric lindvall]

Attachment: Patch to enable autoFill for URLBar

This allows for the auto-fill to be set via a preference.

Comment 2

[Erik]

I'll confirm this one and bug #203754 so the devs can have a look on it...

=> confirming and setting All/All

Comment 3

[David P James]

Taking QA. Sorry for the bugspam

Comment 4

[David P James]

After applying the patch (with fuzz) and building Firebird the pref
browser.urlbar.autoFill does not show up in about:config as I would have
expected. If I put that pref into my user.js and set to true it does indeed
enable autofill in the url bar (yay). Perhaps a change to all.js is needed as
well? If that's the case then the appropriate place for that change is bug
186136, since a decision on true/false would have to be made. If not and
something else needs to be changed then the appropriate place is here.

Comment 5

[eric lindvall]

i'll have to update the patch do add it to the all.js.

Comment 6

[David P James]

--> Brian Ryner

Comment 7

[David P James]

Comment on attachment 121990 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch to enable autoFill for URLBar

Brian: Can you take a look at this and decide if we want this? Both IE and Moz
have it, so I suspect so.

Comment 8

[Brian Ryner (not reading)]

Comment on attachment 121990 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch to enable autoFill for URLBar

passing over to ben.

Comment 9

[David P James]

Ben:

Could you take a look at this patch and decide if we want this?

Comment 10

[Lisa]

I've wanted FB to have inline autocomplete for a while, but I don't like this patch.

It makes sense for the drop-down autocomplete to be the most recently or most
often viewed pages, or perhaps all matching pages in alphabetical order. But I
think IE did a better job with inline autocomplete in that it only autocompletes
up to the first "/". If you want more filled in after, you hit right-arrow and
start typing more, and it then fills in to the next "/". Otherwise, if you want,
for example, www.amazon.com, and you get an address with a whole string of ****
after that, it's a pain to then have to get rid of that **** to finally get to
the page you want.

I dunno if this is feasible for FB, but I thought it might just be something to
think about.

Comment 11

[Prognathous]

Lisa wrote:

> If you want more filled in after, you hit right-arrow and
> start typing more, and it then fills in to the next "/". Otherwise, if you want,
> for example, www.amazon.com, and you get an address with a whole string of crap
> after that, it's a pain to then have to get rid of that crap to finally get to
> the page you want.

You're obviously only familiar with IE implementation, not with the much wiser
one in Mozilla Seamonkey. When using the latter only the most common URL is
displayed in the address bar, in your case, that would be www.amazon.com without
any additions. Try it, and you'll be amazed at how useful it is (it's still one
of the only bugs that keep me from upgrading to Firebird)

Prog.

Comment 12

[Lisa]

i don't have the time at the moment to go monkeying around with another browser,
so i'll take your word for it, Prog. Still, it's clear this patch to give FB
inline autocomplete is not quite on par with other methods out there. But that
raises the question: if Seamonkey can do it so well, why can't FB have the exact
same functionality?

Another thing I noticed with it is that it doesn't like to remember links you
click, only you type. Though as my amazon example showed, it has no problem
remembering links you're redirected to. Not a great combination, in my mind.

Comment 13

[Robert Parenton]

This patch, along with setting:

user_pref("browser.urlbar.autocomplete.learning.mode", 2);

to enable the learning machine provides the same functionality that Mozilla has,
which is far superior to what IE provides.

Comment 14

[eric lindvall]

Seems like your complaint is a little off-topic.

This patch merely enables filling in the first result from the drop-down in the
URL bar.

If the order of the URLs in the URL bar are sub-optimal, that seems like a
seperate bug.

I agree that the ordering should be fixed, but it just confuses the issue to
talk about it on this bug.

Comment 15

[Lisa]

It wasn't off topic at the time, because I was talking about making the
autocomplete function behave differently from the drop down menu, which *would*
be considered an issue with the autofill patch. But you're probably right. Are
there already any plans that you know of to monkey with the ordering of the drop
down menu?

Thanks, Robert, for pointing out the learning mode. I have a feeling FB
autocomplete will work a lot better for me now.

Comment 16

[alanjstr]

There are plenty of other Autocomplete bugs:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Firebird&component=Autocomplete&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED

Bug 186136 Comment 17
[bug 186136] is now about adding a UI access point to browser.urlbar.autoFill and
whether or not to set it on by default. Bug 203756 is about adding the pref itself.

Comment 17

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

not a blocker, this doesn't even have a decision on whether it is going to be
supported period

Comment 18

[Prognathous]

David P James, your patch has a "bryner: review?" flag for more than 8 months.
How about asking someone else to review it? with 26 votes, this is a highly
wanted feature that shouldn't be Seamonkey-only.

Prog.

Comment 19

[Prognathous]

Redirecting my suggestion to Eric Lindvall who is the cretor of the patch. 

Sorry for the spam, but since a patch *is* available and waiting for review, I'd
hate to see it lost in oblivion.

Prog.

PS.
Also related: Bug 186136 ("best match as you type"/inline autocomplete is
missing in Firebird) -> 32 votes

Comment 20

[eric lindvall]

I don't know who i should be giving this to.

Everyone I've tried to review it hasn't ever responded.

Comment 21

[Prognathous]

Try http://www.mozilla.org/owners.html and if that doesn't help, then the
quickest way to find out would be mozilla at irc://moznet

Prog.

Comment 22

[alanjstr]

You don't need to reviewer-shop.  Someone will get to it when they have time. 
Each developer has a long bugzilla queue and some things are higher priority.

Comment 23

[eric lindvall]

Should I wait until it's been 1 year? 2 years?

Comment 24

[alanjstr]

It is called bitrot and it is known to happen.  Your best bet is to try to catch
someone on IRC.  Just changing the flag won't make anything happen.

Comment 25

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Comment on attachment 121990 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch to enable autoFill for URLBar

r=[e-mail]

Comment 26

[eric lindvall]

So what do i need to do about it now? =)

Comment 27

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Comment on attachment 121990 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch to enable autoFill for URLBar

This is going to cause the JS observer to stay alive until the browser shuts
down, since you never call removeObserver.  This will mean the JS global object
will also leak.  You need to call removeObserver in an appropriate place.  (You
can double-check this with the ++DOMWINDOW and --DOMWINDOW printfs in debug
builds.)

Comment 28

[eric lindvall]

Attachment: improved patch

This patches against the latest firefox tree and makes required calls to
removeObserver().

Comment 29

[David P James]

*** Bug 240155 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 30

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

not a blocker but we'll try to get to this for beta. 

Comment 31

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Comment on attachment 144469 [details] [diff] [review]
improved patch

good work, r=[e-mail]

Comment 32

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

will check this in with some cleanup of indenting soon

Comment 33

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

+ since there is a patch. 

Comment 34

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

checked in, branch and trunk, 2004-05-05 16:25

Comment 35

[Mike Coppins]

I don't see inline autocomplete in the May 6th or 7th builds, and I do have
browser.urlbar.autoFill = true in my config.  Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Comment 36

[eric lindvall]

(In reply to comment #35)
> I don't see inline autocomplete in the May 6th or 7th builds, and I do have
> browser.urlbar.autoFill = true in my config.  Is there something I'm doing wrong?

You're correct. I realize now there isn't an entry in the config js (is that
all.js?)

you'll have to set it in your user.js:
user_pref("browser.urlbar.autoFill", true);

or via about:config

Comment 37

[Mike Coppins]

Not sure what you mean, but anyway, I've removed the reference from prefs.js and
put it into user.js, but no difference.

Comment 38

[Julian Hsiao]

Mike Coppins,

I just downloaded and installed 20040508 for Windows.  Inserted the
browser.urlbar.autoFill property via about:config.  It works fine for me. 
Perhaps you want to try a clean install with fresh profiles?

As a side note, is it possible to extend this functionality to all the fields
(e.g. search bar, web forms)?

Comment 39

[Mike Coppins]

Yup, thanks, found the problem.

Comment 40

[alanjstr]

*** Bug 186136 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***