106791 - Autocomplete should not work for the first N characters

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Location Bar, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Erik Hensema]

The autocomplete on the URL Bar is very handy, but it is rather useless to start
guessing what the user is going to type when he just entered one character.

I propose that autocomplete doesn't kick in in the first N (configurable) typed
characters.

This would prevent Mozilla from presenting some senseless default after the user
just entered a 'w' or even 'www.'.

Personally I'd set the autocomplete-minimum to about six. That is, 'www.' (four
characters) and two "random" characters.

Also, it would speed up to URL Bar a bit. Not that it's really slow, but faster
is better.

Comment 1

[Shotaro Kamio]

You don't need to start typing "www".
If you type "mozi", mozilla will autocomplete like "www.mozilla.org".

Comment 2

[Erik Hensema]

Still, typing 'm' shouldn't autocomplete.

Maybe it should start to autocomplete after a timeout of, say, one second.

Comment 3

[Adam Hauner]

Erik, I'm sorry, but there are many locations which didn't start with 'www.'
prefix. I wanna be able to autocomplete these URLs too.
What about marking INVALID or WONTFIX?

Comment 4

[Erik Hensema]

Offcourse I know many locations don't start with www. As Shotaro Kamio pointed
out, there's no need to enter that 'www.' to autocomplete an URL. Still,
entering something like 'b' in the URL bar autocompletes to something that very
likely NOT to be the site the user wants to visit. Therefore it's useless to
autocomplete when a single letter is entered, IMHO.

However, after having entered 'bug' there's a good chance the user wants to go
back to 'bugzilla.mozilla.org'. So, after two or three characters entered the
autocomplete should kick in.

Comment 5

[Adam Hauner]

If one character is relevant or is not relevant for autocomplete is depending on
amount of visited sites.

Comment 6

[Tom Mraz]

Confirming.
It's probably enhancement not a bug.

Comment 7

[nnooiissee]

i would say invalid. if i type x i expect to see http://www.xiph.org/

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

I like being able to type 's<enter>' to get to slashdot or 'er<enter>' to get to
my favorite porn site.  I vote for wontfix.

Comment 9

[Andrew Schultz]

WONTFIXing
The whole point of autocomplete is that you need to type less.  7 characters is... a lot.  The feedback from the first few letters can help you remember the rest or notice mistakes, etc.

If I can get bug 261362 fixed, URL bar will show matches with even fewer characters than it does now