1104971 - Ctrl+up/down should cycle through one-off search buttons

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[(mostly gone) XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall]]

Using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0 ID:20141120192249 CSet: 2faac5336c1e when trying to use the search bar there is/are

* no icon of set search provider
* no reaction to switching the search provider using the mousewheel
* no reaction to switching the search provider using ctrl+up/down keys
* no providers are populated when clicking the magnifier icon

In Nightly all above is WFM.
Not trying to be judgmental, but this smells rather like an unfinished prototype kind of thing running against the (last?) beta, no?
Per https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar 34 is out next week.

Comment 1

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall] from comment #0)
> Using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101
> Firefox/34.0 ID:20141120192249 CSet: 2faac5336c1e when trying to use the
> search bar there is/are
> 
> * no icon of set search provider
> * no reaction to switching the search provider using the mousewheel
> * no reaction to switching the search provider using ctrl+up/down keys
> * no providers are populated when clicking the magnifier icon

Without steps to reproduce and expected/actual results explicitly mentioned, I have to guess what you mean, so I may misunderstand some of your points, but it seems to me you are trying to use the old UI that we replaced, and all these things are no longer here by design.

https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2014/11/find-it-faster/ explains what we intended to do with the new UI.

If we can preserve some behaviors of the old UI without interfering with the new UI, we'll likely do it for 35 (eg. Ctrl+up/down may cycle through the list of one-click engine buttons in the future).

After reading this blog post, are there still things that you think are missing or not implemented properly?

Comment 2

[Al Billings [:abillings - ex-MoCo]]

What about making the changing of the search provider sticky, like it was before? It used to be that once you changed which search provider you were using (using control/command-up and down), it would stay on that provider for all subsequent searches. Right now, it goes back to your default provider after you make a search with another one.

Comment 3

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Al Billings [:abillings] from comment #2)
> What about making the changing of the search provider sticky, like it was
> before? It used to be that once you changed which search provider you were
> using (using control/command-up and down), it would stay on that provider
> for all subsequent searches.

This is exactly the behavior we intentionally removed with bug 1088660, because it caused lots of users to change their default search providers by accident without understanding what happened.

Comment 4

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #3)
> (In reply to Al Billings [:abillings] from comment #2)
> > What about making the changing of the search provider sticky, like it was
> > before? It used to be that once you changed which search provider you were
> > using (using control/command-up and down), it would stay on that provider
> > for all subsequent searches.
> 
> This is exactly the behavior we intentionally removed with bug 1088660,
> because it caused lots of users to change their default search providers by
> accident without understanding what happened.

Any statistics on this? I'd suspect that Ctrl+Up/Down is hard to press unintentionally.

Also an accidental change of the default search provider is now mitigated by visibly offering the option 'Change Search Settings' to change it back.

Sebastian

Comment 5

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Sebastian Zartner [:sebo] from comment #4)

> > This is exactly the behavior we intentionally removed with bug 1088660,
> > because it caused lots of users to change their default search providers by
> > accident without understanding what happened.
> 
> Any statistics on this? I'd suspect that Ctrl+Up/Down is hard to press
> unintentionally.

I wasn't talking about ctrl+up/down in that sentence, but about having to change one's default search engine to use another engine.

Comment 6

[Al Billings [:abillings - ex-MoCo]]

We are using 'default' in different ways. I mean that when you using the arrows to change your provider in the search box, it no longer sticks after that one search so you have to change it by hand for every search if you do nt want use your overall default provider.

Comment 7

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

FWIW, the interaction I'm really missing since the change goes something like this:

  Cmd-K, Alt-Down, {first-letter-of-search-engine}, {search-terms}, Return

I've done this many times a day, using a half-dozen search engines. Now all my searches are, ironically, slower :) Would love to see a return of something similarly efficient or better

Comment 8

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Les Orchard [:lorchard] from comment #7)
>   Cmd-K, Alt-Down, {first-letter-of-search-engine}, {search-terms}, Return

Didn't know about Alt+Up/Down opening the search engines menu. Thanks for the info! Not sure though if that's part of this issue as it seems to be just about bringing back the functionality for Ctrl+Up/Down.

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #5)
> I wasn't talking about ctrl+up/down in that sentence, but about having to
> change one's default search engine to use another engine.

I see. So the simple solution would be to only change the search engine temporarily.
This would work like that:

1. Press Ctrl+Up/Down to switch to the search engine you want to use for the current search
   => The icon of the search engine and the related text are visible within the search box like in previous versions of Firefox.
2. Start typing your search terms
3. Hit Enter
   => You search using the selected search engine and the search box switches back to the default search.

The steps described above could also work for Alt+Up/Down. The difference would be that the search popup appears and you can visually select the search engine first or by pressing the first letter of the search engine as Les described. Should that be part of a new issue?

Sebastian

Comment 9

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

My current assumption is that the bug here is only about making ctrl+up/down do the same thing as what tab/shift+tab currently do. Unless Philipp disagrees and wants to further spec a more complicated behavior here, I think other enhancements would be better handled in their own bugs.

Comment 10

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #9)
> My current assumption is that the bug here is only about making ctrl+up/down
> do the same thing as what tab/shift+tab currently do. Unless Philipp
> disagrees and wants to further spec a more complicated behavior here, I
> think other enhancements would be better handled in their own bugs.

I filed bug 1108488 and bug 1108490 covering the cases for more advanced behavior of Ctrl+Up/Down and Alt+Up/Down like in previous versions of Firefox.

Sebastian

Comment 11

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

This is no longer something we plan to do; UX recommends we do what's specified in bug 1110678 instead. This new plan should make people who used ctrl+up/down in the old UI happier.