It was designed before retained results, and the design was not re-evaluated after them. This makes me think the original intent may have been partially replaced by retained results. At a minimum we must confirm the behavior with Verdi. Additionally, when it opens in other cases (non top sites), if results include search suggestions we still have "flicker" problems where suggestions will come sooner or later than the other results, and Verdi may not like that. While it's more acceptable to have that kinf of "flicker" while the user is typing (results dynamically change while typing), here we just open a panel and focus user's attention on it.
Bug 1601052 Comment 11 Edit History
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It was designed before retained results, and the design was not re-evaluated after them. This makes me think the original intent may have been partially replaced by retained results. At a minimum we must confirm the behavior with Verdi. Additionally, when it opens in other cases (non top sites), if results include search suggestions we still have "flicker" problems where suggestions will come sooner or later than the other results, and Verdi may not like that. While it's more acceptable to have that kind of "flicker" while the user is typing (results dynamically change while typing), here we just open a panel and focus user's attention on it.