1124233 - Search By Keywords Does Not Work

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[cogdogblog]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.95 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

As described by https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar 

(1) I set up a keyword search filtered for creative commons from their advanced search page, keyword is "fcc" and the search pattern is registered in the bookmarks as https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=%s

(2) In the location bar I enter my keyword "fcc" and press return


Actual results:

rather than getting the chance to enter my keyword search, Firefox does a web search on FCC. Furthermore, the search pattern does not match the options selected (filter by creative commons). 

This fails on Wikimedia commons, imdb, all search boxes I attempted


Expected results:

I expected, like Chrome and Safari, I could do a search with options pre-set for a search based on a keyword shortcurt in the address bar

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to cogdogblog from comment #0)
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_5)
> AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.95 Safari/537.36
> 
> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> As described by
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar 
> 
> (1) I set up a keyword search filtered for creative commons from their
> advanced search page, keyword is "fcc" and the search pattern is registered
> in the bookmarks as https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=%s
> 
> (2) In the location bar I enter my keyword "fcc" and press return

The idea is that you put in "fcc flowers" and that will make Firefox take you to: https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=flowers -- in other words, the "%s" bit gets replaced with any other words you use after the keyword, allowing you to search for arbitrary things.

> I expected, like Chrome and Safari, I could do a search with options pre-set
> for a search based on a keyword shortcurt in the address bar

It sounds like you just want a keyword for a bookmark? The options are going to have to be in the URL for the options to work. It's not 100% clear to me what you're doing in Chrome/Safari, but it sounds like you just have a bookmark to a specific search results page with the search terms and the other options already filled in.

Can you clarify what you do in Chrome/Safari, perhaps with a screenshot, perhaps with a more detailed explanation, and/or what Firefox is doing wrong here?

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

In particular, for a CC-only search, it seems like you should change the bookmarked URL to:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=relevance&text=%s&license=1%2C2%2C3%2C4%2C5%2C6

Comment 3

[cogdogblog]

I am trying to do what is described here
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar

It is using keywords as a quick search shortcur.

In Chrome, I can right/control click on the results of a search field, and "Save as Search Engine" with a key word. Then I just type the keyword in the location bar, press space, then enter multiple keywords. It allows me to do complex searches from the address bar w/o having to navigate to the site to do a search.



This used to work in Firefox the way described https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar

The bookmark search in current Firefox will only work if the keyword comes at the end of the URL (many other searches have the keywords in the middle of URL parameter string), its not doing a pattern substitution, its just bookmarking the search URL. And yes, I could edit the bookmark, but your average user will never get that far.

If this functionality is no longer present, it should not be listed as so on the first URL.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to cogdogblog from comment #3)
> I am trying to do what is described here
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar
> 
> It is using keywords as a quick search shortcur.
> 
> In Chrome, I can right/control click on the results of a search field, and
> "Save as Search Engine" with a key word. Then I just type the keyword in the
> location bar, press space, then enter multiple keywords. It allows me to do
> complex searches from the address bar w/o having to navigate to the site to
> do a search.

OK. So this is the same feature Firefox has, so far... 

> This used to work in Firefox the way described
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar

It still does for me, I use these for my work every day...

> The bookmark search in current Firefox will only work if the keyword comes
> at the end of the URL (many other searches have the keywords in the middle
> of URL parameter string), its not doing a pattern substitution, its just
> bookmarking the search URL. And yes, I could edit the bookmark, but your
> average user will never get that far.

Where do you draw this conclusion from (about only the end of the URL working)?

In the flickr case, the search box in the top right ignores the selection items underneath it (try searching once, altering to CC-only, and then hitting enter/return again inside the textbox). This is why the context menu item doesn't work. It has nothing to do with the end of the URL. What exactly doesn't work here, from your perspective?

Comment 5

[cogdogblog]

It's not working for me.  I was giving a workshop yesterday, demoing this on chrome, and was unable to help people using Firefox browsers. It did not work on at least two other computers in the room.

I'm just reporting the issue so you are aware.

I made a simple one for flickr search named "fc"

In the address bar I type "fc" and press return

I just end up on the flickr search page.

Attaching screen shots to the entry.

thanks

Comment 6

[cogdogblog]

Attachment: Smart Keyword Search not working

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to cogdogblog from comment #5)
> It's not working for me.  I was giving a workshop yesterday, demoing this on
> chrome, and was unable to help people using Firefox browsers. It did not
> work on at least two other computers in the room.
> 
> I'm just reporting the issue so you are aware.
> 
> I made a simple one for flickr search named "fc"
> 
> In the address bar I type "fc" and press return
> 
> I just end up on the flickr search page.

Why is this not expected? If you type "fc flowers", you end up on a flickr search for 'flowers', right? Which is what you want, right?

This is also what it says in the kb article you linked in comment #0:

> "To use the created smart bookmark, enter the keyword **and the search string** in the Location bar and then press Return. "

(emphasis mine)

What are you expecting typing "fc" and then immediately hitting enter to do instead?

I just tried this in chrome, and if I just hit enter on "fc" after creating the keyword search (as you suggest above), it does a google search instead. :-\

Comment 8

[cogdogblog]

Ok. That was my mistake, sorry. 

In Firefox, you enter the keyword and the search terms and *then* press return. Yes, that works.

In Chrome, you enter the keyword and *space/tab* (this activates the search shortcut) then enter the keyword and press return. Yes, that works (if you press return right after the keyword, then you get the search as you saw)

It's just a slightly different user interface convention, no one better than the other.  Thanks for the followup with my misunderstanding. Closing, this is not an issue.