1108488 - Allow to select the search engine via Ctrl+Up/Down before entering a search term

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

In the new search interface Ctrl+Up/Down doesn't work like before. They previously allowed to select a different search engine while and before you were typing in your search term.

Use case:
1. Within the search box 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 only difference to the old behavior would be that the search engine previously didn't change anymore after searching.)

Sebastian

Comment 1

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

Philipp, is this something we want to do?

Reasons to do it:
- it seems a tiny portion of our users (in % but not necessarily in absolute numbers) rely on this behavior and are (very) frustrated that we took this away.
- selecting the engine first, and then typing, would let us get suggestions from the engine the user actually wants for this search, and avoid the privacy leak of sending the user typed string to the wrong engine.

Possible interaction:
- Clicking the glass icon or pressing ctrl/alt+up/down while the textfield of the searchbox is empty would open a panel without search history (like currently), but WITH the one off buttons (unlike currently).
- Selecting one of these buttons with the keyboard (tab/up/down + enter) or a mouse click would close the panel, but not load the engine's home page. Instead it would temporarily replace the glass icon with the engine's icon.
- When the user starts typing, we display the current (non default) engine at the top of the panel, and display suggestions for that engine.
- When the user has performed a search, the current engine goes back to the default (and we show the glass icon again).

I'm not sure how much I like this idea, but it has the advantage of preserving the old behavior that some people are used to without affecting the new behavior we are pushing. Downsides are additional code complexity, and the slightly inconsistent behavior of the one-off buttons when the text field is empty (they would load the engine's home page if the one-off has been selected after opening the panel with the down arrow, but select a 'current' engine if the panel was opened with a click on the glass icon or ctrl/alt+down).

Comment 2

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #1)
> - Clicking the glass icon or pressing ctrl/alt+up/down while the textfield
> of the searchbox is empty would open a panel without search history (like
> currently), but WITH the one off buttons (unlike currently).
> - Selecting one of these buttons with the keyboard (tab/up/down + enter) or
> a mouse click would close the panel, but not load the engine's home page.
> Instead it would temporarily replace the glass icon with the engine's icon.

This would also cover the currently broken workflow many people are used to from the old UI of

1) select your search engine for the search (with keyboard or mouse)
2) enter search text

Probably without being aware that they were in effect changing the default search engine.

Comment 3

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #1)
> - Selecting one of these buttons with the keyboard (tab/up/down + enter) or
> a mouse click would close the panel, but not load the engine's home page.
> Instead it would temporarily replace the glass icon with the engine's icon.

A variation of this could be to instead keep the panel open, but with the search engine visibly selected (and temporarily replacing the default engine shown above the suggestions box).

Comment 4

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Attachment: Mockup of possible solution

Yeah, the inconsistency in the behavior of the one click buttons has kept me from considering this so far.

That said, after mocking up Florians suggestion (with some minor tweaks), I think there is a way to deal with this that adds more power for advanced users, is consistent with previous behaviors and doesn't confuse non-power-users too much.

Comment 5

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] Currently behind on reviews & needinfos from comment #4)
> Created attachment 8534291 [details]
> Mockup of possible solution

Am I understanding correctly that this mockup would make the current engine a per-window thing, and it wouldn't be reverted to the global default after doing a search?


In my previous suggestion, a possible way to make the inconsistent behavior less confusing would have been to change the "Search for <keyword> on:" line to "Next search with:" (where in your mockup you have "Chose Search Engine").

Comment 6

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #5)
> (In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] Currently behind on reviews & needinfos
> from comment #4)
> > Created attachment 8534291 [details]
> > Mockup of possible solution
> 
> Am I understanding correctly that this mockup would make the current engine
> a per-window thing, and it wouldn't be reverted to the global default after
> doing a search?
> 
> 
> In my previous suggestion, a possible way to make the inconsistent behavior
> less confusing would have been to change the "Search for <keyword> on:" line
> to "Next search with:" (where in your mockup you have "Chose Search Engine").

I think this would be much less confusing. Whether you select the search engine for the next search before or after you type the search text should make no difference, otherwise another inconsistency is introduced.

Comment 7

[Axel Grude [:realRaven]]

(In reply to aleth [:aleth] from comment #2)
> (In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #1)
> > - Clicking the glass icon or pressing ctrl/alt+up/down while the textfield
> > of the searchbox is empty would open a panel without search history (like
> > currently), but WITH the one off buttons (unlike currently).
> > - Selecting one of these buttons with the keyboard (tab/up/down + enter) or
> > a mouse click would close the panel, but not load the engine's home page.
> > Instead it would temporarily replace the glass icon with the engine's icon.
> 
> This would also cover the currently broken workflow many people are used to
> from the old UI of
> 
> 1) select your search engine for the search (with keyboard or mouse)
> 2) enter search text
> 
> Probably without being aware that they were in effect changing the default
> search engine.

This would have been my expectation as well. As a user who likes to do "stretches of work" within one search engine, the concept of a DEFAULT ENGINE actually makes little sense. There is only always the one I am currently using, until I skip to the next one. Why not offer the option to make searches "sticky" (clicking actually DOES CHANGE the default. And what's this ting with the missing search engine icon in the bar? That feels broken "because layout" to me. Again, a choice in the matter would be great.

Comment 8

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Axel Grude [:realRaven] from comment #7)
> As a user who likes to do
> "stretches of work" within one search engine, the concept of a DEFAULT
> ENGINE actually makes little sense. There is only always the one I am
> currently using, until I skip to the next one. Why not offer the option to
> make searches "sticky" (clicking actually DOES CHANGE the default. And
> what's this ting with the missing search engine icon in the bar? That feels
> broken "because layout" to me. Again, a choice in the matter would be great.

While I mainly agree that the previous search functionality was better in some cases, your points sound a bit off-topic in regard of this issue. You may want to create a new one, comment on the blog post[1], the mailing list or at ask.mozilla.org for a general discussion about the new search functionality.

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #5)
> (In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] Currently behind on reviews & needinfos
> from comment #4)
> > Created attachment 8534291 [details]
> > Mockup of possible solution
> 
> Am I understanding correctly that this mockup would make the current engine
> a per-window thing, and it wouldn't be reverted to the global default after
> doing a search?

FWIW I like the idea of having a per-tab selection of the search engine. Though I agree with aleth that the pre-selection of the search engine should not behave differently than the post-selection.
Therefore whether having the search engine selection work per-tab should be discussed separately. So I created bug 1109839 for that.

> In my previous suggestion, a possible way to make the inconsistent behavior
> less confusing would have been to change the "Search for <keyword> on:" line
> to "Next search with:" (where in your mockup you have "Chose Search Engine").

That assumes that the search engine will be switched back to the default after searching once.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2014/11/find-it-faster/

Comment 9

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

Will this be part of bug 1110678?

Sebastian

Comment 10

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Sebastian Zartner [:sebo] from comment #9)
> Will this be part of bug 1110678?

No, I do prefer the design we had here, but we agreed it was too risky for 35. Bug 1110678 is what we will do for Firefox 35, and we expect to rediscuss here the longer term plan in January.

Comment 12

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

Comment on attachment 8534291 [details]
Mockup of possible solution

We talked about this and decided on the solution found in bug 1110678.

Comment 13

[Axel Grude [:realRaven]]

(In reply to Stephen Horlander [:shorlander] from comment #12)
> Comment on attachment 8534291 [details]
> Mockup of possible solution
> 
> We talked about this and decided on the solution found in bug 1110678.

I like the fact that the "new engine" icon is "Hoisted up" into the box for clarity. But having it "stick to Wikipedia" in the tab is excellent as it is exactly the way I like to use search - I might just do research in mdn for an hour so switching to that in a tab makes sense. 

Other question: I have my search setting set up to "Open a new tab" on each search - if I am searching from this "Wiki" tab, I would expect this also to be Wikipedia once it is changed to that?

Comment 15

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Robert B. from comment #14)
> … and in addition to comment #8 (it is no longer possible to comment the
> blog post [1] – and btw it ate my comment as spam or so):
> 
> What is exactly the benefit of the new search bar?

As I said in comment #8, this bug report is not the right place for general critique on the changed behavior. Please use other media for that.

Sebastian

Comment 16

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Stephen Horlander [:shorlander] from comment #12)
> Comment on attachment 8534291 [details]
> Mockup of possible solution
> 
> We talked about this and decided on the solution found in bug 1110678.

Given that we used the ctrl+up/down key binding in bug 1110678, I think we are now unlikely to fix this bug; however bug 1110820 is very similar, and still likely to get UX attention soon.

Comment 17

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #16)
> (In reply to Stephen Horlander [:shorlander] from comment #12)
> > Comment on attachment 8534291 [details]
> > Mockup of possible solution
> > 
> > We talked about this and decided on the solution found in bug 1110678.
> 
> Given that we used the ctrl+up/down key binding in bug 1110678, I think we
> are now unlikely to fix this bug; however bug 1110820 is very similar, and
> still likely to get UX attention soon.

Hmm, I'm not completely happy with the UX yet. Main point here:
There's no indication about the default search engine within the empty search field. You'll just know which engine will be used for the search after pressing Ctrl+Up/Down once. And by that you already change the default search engine.
Is there an explanation for why the default search engine is not displayed anymore before starting to search or should I create a new bug to discuss that?

I'll close this bug anyway, though, as the main functionality of Ctrl+Up/Down was re-added.

Sebastian

Comment 18

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Sebastian Zartner [:sebo] from comment #17)

> Is there an explanation for why the default search engine is not displayed
> anymore before starting to search or should I create a new bug to discuss
> that?

This was changed intentionally (although discussed only very quickly) because with the addition of the one-off buttons, we feel that the searchbox and the search panel are no longer used to search just one specific engine, but are the starting point for any search. What I mean is that if you want to search ebay, you are less likely to do it in a field that reads "Google" or "Yahoo".

If you think this was a mistake, you can still open a bug to have a definitive answer from UX.