1135495 - Merge search bookmarks and installed search engines

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 648398

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[Florens Verschelde :fvsch]

CURRENT SITUATION:

Firefox offers two ways for users to install a search engine:

1. OpenSearch, surfaced to users in the main search bar (now more visibly than before) when declared in a web page, and some available from addons.mozilla.org.
2. Search bookmarks, surfaced to users as the “Add a Keyword for this Search…” context menu option for some form inputs.

These two sources of search options are not integrated in most ways.

Keywords in the Awesome Bar:
This works similarly for both installed search engines and search bookmarks.

Available search engines in about:preferences#search:
Only the installed search engines are listed. Search bookmarks are ignored.

One-click search engines in the search bar:
Only the activated One-click search engines (from about:preferences#search) are listed, hence search bookmarks are ignored.

Search engines in about:newtab:
Not sure if it's just me, but the magnifier button only shows a link to about:preferences#search nowadays. So both installed search engines and search bookmarks are on equal footing here, since they can't be accessed. I guess that would be a separate bug.

Sync situation:
- Search bookmarks can be synced as Bookmarks.
- Not sure about installed search engines. In my experience they didn't sync but maybe this has changed at some point. Do they sync as either Bookmarks (doubt it), Add-ons (possibly?) or Preferences (most likely candidate)?

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

All search engines from both sources (bookmarks, XML search engines) should be listed in about:preferences#search, and available as One-click search engines.

If XML search engines are not currently synced, they should be synced either as Preferences, or as their own category.

All places that offer web search should give access to all search engines listed and activated in about:preferences#search: search bar, about:home, about:newtab.

Implementation-wise, I don't know if it's better to keep both sources separate (as currently) to avoid breaking users' preferences, or if search bookmarks should be imported as XML search engines first, then ignored (then the “Add a Keyword for this Search…” context menu item should create a XML search engine rather than a bookmark).

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

This is a good idea.

Comment 2

[David Lawrence [:dkl]]

Mistakenly filed against Firefox 38 and should be instead 38 Branch. Sorry for the spam. dkl