Drew, I am a longtime Firefox user, so this issue doesn't bother me so much -- but it does matter quite a bit to people used to other browsers - which is why I mentioned that this was inspired by a post on reddit. In my testing, my STR does what I expect in Chrome. Safari does what Firefox does today. GNOME Web doesn't autofill at all (!) but seems to show me my expected URL as its first suggestion. >Point 2 is that when you start typing play.google.com, we "autofill" the domain in the input, meaning we change the input text so that after you type "p" the input automatically becomes "play.google.com", with "lay.google.com" selected. Firefox will first start autofilling domains. If you then finish typing play.google.com and type a slash, autofill will start autofilling full URLs, piece by piece. That's what autofill means, and Firefox has worked that way for a long long time now, and we don't have plans to change that. I see no real reason why that needs to be the case, frankly. I don't think it is at all intuitive that URLs that I have never visited are autofilled for me. I would much prefer Firefox try to save me time (like Chrome does). What is the logic behind showing the domain (even if I have never visited it by itself)? It would almost make sense if it were to "reserve" the possibility for "tab to search" like in Chrome, but I have never seen any plans to do that in Firefox - ```pl``` then ```Tab``` to search play.google.com (if it were somehow OpenSearch capable) would make more sense because it'd be weird if tab somehow turned a visited page into a search for the whole domain. Are there plans for tab to search or can you help me understand why it makes sense to autofill to domains that I have never visited? This seems to punish power users at the expense of optimizing towards behaviors that may test well for occasional users, or users who are completing a basic task once or twice. I would be curious if there were any data or experiments showing that the current behavior is superior to Chrome's behavior in the long run of an experienced user. I'm thinking of the trillions of keystrokes "wasted" to press down to select the first suggestion *when the first suggestion is what they wanted*. A question which would be useful to answer is: for typed entries to the address bar, what percentage of them result in visits to domains the user has never visited, vs. to the FIRST suggestion. Another quick example - I have a bookmark for https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 which I visit occasionally (a couple of times a week). I *never* visit https://www.weather.gov/ or https://forecast.weather.gov/ which thankfully appear below my the specific location URL. Instead, I get an autofill for https://www.wealthfront.com/ -- a URL I may have visited years ago (why not https://forecast.weather.gov/). Firefox correctly knows that I want to go to https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 but doesn't save me time. >Asif, thanks for filing these autofill bugs, but I think you're misunderstanding what Firefox is doing. You are right -- I expected that the frecency algorithms in Firefox would grow to fit my habits like a glove, and "sense" what I want -- instead, it feels like I get the wrong behavior even as I continue to train the awesomebar. The awesomebar feels less awesome and more like something I need to learn. I created a fresh profile and visited https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 I then typed in ```wea```. This time, I don't get an autofill at all (which is what I would expect based on your last comment) -- I would expect an autofill to https://forecast.weather.gov/ - but instead I get a suggestion for "Search with Google". Why does that happen?
Bug 1560821 Comment 5 Edit History
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Drew, I am a longtime Firefox user, so this issue doesn't bother me so much -- but it does matter quite a bit to people used to other browsers - which is why I mentioned that this was inspired by a post on reddit. In my testing, my STR does what I expect in Chrome. Safari does what Firefox does today. GNOME Web doesn't autofill at all (!) but seems to show me my expected URL as its first suggestion. >Point 2 is that when you start typing play.google.com, we "autofill" the domain in the input, meaning we change the input text so that after you type "p" the input automatically becomes "play.google.com", with "lay.google.com" selected. Firefox will first start autofilling domains. If you then finish typing play.google.com and type a slash, autofill will start autofilling full URLs, piece by piece. That's what autofill means, and Firefox has worked that way for a long long time now, and we don't have plans to change that. I see no real reason why that needs to be the case, frankly. I don't think it is at all intuitive that URLs that I have never visited are autofilled for me. I would much prefer Firefox try to save me time (like Chrome does). What is the logic behind showing the domain (even if I have never visited it by itself)? It would almost make sense if it were to "reserve" the possibility for "tab to search" like in Chrome, but I have never seen any plans to do that in Firefox - ```pl``` then ```Tab``` to search play.google.com (if it were somehow OpenSearch capable) would make more sense because it'd be weird if tab somehow turned a visited page into a search for the whole domain. Are there plans for tab to search or can you help me understand why it makes sense to autofill to domains that I have never visited? This seems to punish power users at the expense of optimizing towards behaviors that may test well for occasional users, or users who are completing a basic task once or twice. I would be curious if there were any data or experiments showing that the current behavior is superior to Chrome's behavior in the long run of an experienced user. I'm thinking of the trillions of keystrokes "wasted" to press down to select the first suggestion *when the first suggestion is what they wanted*. A question which would be useful to answer is: for typed entries to the address bar, what percentage of them result in visits to domains the user has never visited, vs. to the FIRST suggestion. Another quick example - I have a bookmark for https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 which I visit occasionally (a couple of times a week). I *never* visit https://www.weather.gov/ or https://forecast.weather.gov/ which thankfully appear below my more specific location URL. Instead, I get an autofill for https://www.wealthfront.com/ -- a URL I may have visited years ago (why not https://forecast.weather.gov/). Firefox correctly knows that I want to go to https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 but doesn't save me time. >Asif, thanks for filing these autofill bugs, but I think you're misunderstanding what Firefox is doing. You are right -- I expected that the frecency algorithms in Firefox would grow to fit my habits like a glove, and "sense" what I want -- instead, it feels like I get the wrong behavior even as I continue to train the awesomebar. The awesomebar feels less awesome and more like something I need to learn. I created a fresh profile and visited https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 I then typed in ```wea```. This time, I don't get an autofill at all (which is what I would expect based on your last comment) -- I would expect an autofill to https://forecast.weather.gov/ - but instead I get a suggestion for "Search with Google". Why does that happen?