519830 - clearing history should clear the "typed" flag on bookmarked urls

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Toolkit :: Places, defect, P5)

Description

[al_9x]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.20) Gecko/20081217 Firefox/2.0.0.20
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3

Conceptually, whether a url was typed is historical information and not a bookmark attribute and should therefore be cleared with history.

The practical consequences of not clearing are related to Bug 426864, which was intended to restore Fx2 behavior of only showing typed urls in the default urlbar dropdown.

If typed is not cleared, when you open (click) a bookmark it will start to appear in the dropdown, as if you typed the url.  This is unexpected and counterintuitive behavior.

It is evidently possible to manually execute SQL from the error console.  Can one of the places devs please vet the following command (and its SQL), to be executed after clearing history, to clear the typed flag.

Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("UPDATE moz_places SET typed = 0");

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

I think we preserve it to give better autocomplete results, and we don't usually consider privacy implication in bookmarked pages.

Comment 2

[al_9x]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I think we preserve it to give better autocomplete results, and we don't
> usually consider privacy implication in bookmarked pages.

It's not really about privacy but the contents of default urlbar (no search) dropdown which shows typed urls.  There should be a way to reset it.  Clearing history seems to do that but then the bookmarked urls start appearing in the dropdown, once visited, as if you typed them.  The typed flag is historical data that counterintuitively survives history clearing, that does seem right. When you clear all history, only bookmarks should be left, and typed is not a property of a bookmark and therefore should be reset.

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> It's not really about privacy but the contents of default urlbar (no search)
> dropdown which shows typed urls.  There should be a way to reset it.

Why, to have a useless empty popup?  We are not pursuing pure implementation or conceptually correct concepts for the sake of it, we are pursuing useful UI for the user.  Guessing that some of the previously typed bookmarks may be more important than others is not a bug.  Making an add-on would be easy, but I don't see the benefit of changing this behavior for all users honestly.
IIRC there should be another bug discussing this, but I can't find atm.

Comment 4

[al_9x]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > It's not really about privacy but the contents of default urlbar (no search)
> > dropdown which shows typed urls.  There should be a way to reset it.
> 
> Why, to have a useless empty popup?

Are you arguing against current behavior?  In case I didn't make it clear, the dropdown is cleared in 4.0 by clearing history, as it should be, since typed is historical and not bookmark data and should be clearable.  After that you expect it to be repopulated only with newly typed urls (its intended purpose), but instead it gets refilled with revisited bookmarks that still have their typed flag set.  It's completely unexpected and counterintuitive to have typed survive history clearing, after which you expect to be starting from scratch, history wise, but this particular piece of historical data survives.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

I'm probably arguing against current behavior yes, but I see why it was done like that (I don't have to agree with everything we do, luckily).
The full thing is worth a thought, but I'm not sure there is a clear winner out of the 2 approaches, each of them has pro and cons, and while you prefer restarting from scratch, I can see other users willing to get immediate meaningful data, without having to rebuild it completely.
Could maybe be configurable, but it's not something I'd throw resources at in the near term.

Comment 6

[al_9x]

(In reply to comment #5)
> and while you prefer
> restarting from scratch, I can see other users willing to get immediate
> meaningful data, without having to rebuild it completely.

How can complete clearing of history be interpreted as anything other than the intent to start from scratch, history wise?  The desire to have historical data after clearing history is senseless.  If you want historical data, don't clear history, but if you do clear, it is reasonable to expect all historical data to be gone, and only bookmark data to remain.  Whether you happened to have typed a bookmarked url is clearly historical data and not part of the bookmark.  I doubt anyone has actually requested current behavior, it looks like just an oversight.

Comment 7

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.