891981 - Add setting to select default search engine in Options/Preferences

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Thomas Sisson]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130627172038

Steps to reproduce:

1) Changed my search engine while installing an extension
2) Looked for option to change default search engine in Preferences


Actual results:

Could not change my default search engine in Preferences.


Expected results:

I should have seen an option to change my search engine from a list of available search engines on the General Tab (section), a relatively blank, empty section. Perhaps having an additional button labeled Advanced where one could add a search engine that is not available in the list should be considered as well..

Comment 1

[Thomas Sisson]

This should be marked as "Wish List," but I'm having technical difficulties with my mouse at the moment. It should include any version of Firefox that does not have this preference in the UI; I don't know if it ever existed. It should also be for all platforms and builds. I don't recall if SeaMonkey has the preference in the UI, but it should be added as well if it does not.

In my opinion, this should be marked as Confirmed unless someone can prove otherwise because it is apparent that the UI for this preference does not exist. Of course, it is the prerogative of the programmers and project team members to mark it as "won't fix" or whatever they feel is appropriate.

I see the issue of changing or resetting the search engine all over the web. Many of the suggestions on changing the search engine are juvenile, ignorant, incomplete, condescending, convoluted, complicated, or just plain wrong. Resetting Firefox to the defaults is sometimes suggested, but it is rather drastic just to fix the search engine, unless someone has installed a malicious. I personally cannot remember the preference name to change it without doing an Internet search. I suspect many users are similar. Others do not even remember or know it is in about:config.

Comment 2

[Nisarg Thakkar]

The current ways to manage search engines are shown on this page: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-bar-add-change-manage-search-engines-firefox.
1) But, with the address bar now doubling up as a search bar also, the search widget is redundant. So, users may not keep it visible.
2) If the Search engine in the new tab page is not associated with an icon, its name is shown in the search bar and there is no easy option to change the default search engine.
So, an option should be added to the Edit->Preferences to manage search engines.
I would like to work on this. Can anyone help me out?