1206967 - Improve searching with keywords in address bar ("Quick Searching")

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Leon]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0
Build ID: 20150826023504

Steps to reproduce:

None (open the browser).


Actual results:

Currently the address bar allows to search only with the default search engine.


Expected results:

1.) Users should have option to add and set the abbreviations (short references), which would enable them to search with various search engines.
2.) Users should be able to determine for each additional entry, whether the search would be instant ("search as you type") or manual ("search after you hit enter").
3.) These settings could be implemented for example into about:preferences#search, but also accessible through the right-click on URL (address) bar.

It has to be emphasized, that this functionality is not limited only to "standard" search engines. It can be used broadly. There are many searchable websites (e.g. video-sharing, e-commerce, news/weather/movie/social network websites). It can be used even to calculate.
This functionality exists in Google Chrome for several years already. Here is the clearer explanation: http://www.orlandmedia.com/blog/tutorials/speeding-up-search-with-google-chrome/
For Firefox, the "InstantFox Quick Search" addon is available (https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/instantfox/). But it hasn't been updated for a long time and it doesn't work properly anymore.

Nevertheless, it is surprising that this option still hasn't been implemented in Firefox. Once this search method is adopted, the search speed increases dramatically. The need for using Search box is decreased as well. For the sake of efficiency and productivity, please work on this feature!

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Leon from comment #0)
> 1.) Users should have option to add and set the abbreviations (short
> references), which would enable them to search with various search engines.
> 2.) Users should be able to determine for each additional entry, whether the
> search would be instant ("search as you type") or manual ("search after you
> hit enter").
> 3.) These settings could be implemented for example into
> about:preferences#search, but also accessible through the right-click on URL
> (address) bar.

there's already such a feature, just add keywords for search engines in preferences / search and you can use them in the location bar...
But maybe what you want is to actually get suggestions from other engines rather than just being able to search through different engines?
What is the most important thing you are missing that is not well served by keywords?

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

note you may want to continue even if integrity_check returns OK at the beginning.
Also after all of that is done, you could force a further cleanup step on the new database with this add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

Comment 3

[Leon]

Thank you for answer. I didn't know that it was possible to set keywords in preferences and use it in location bar. This is what I meant.


However, there are still two crucial things missing:
1. The ability to add my own (custom) search engines is not available (or am I missing something?). I can only download additional search engines, which already exist on AMO: https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/search-engines/
The ability to add and modify custom search engines is important for two reasons:
a) Many search engines are not available on AMO.
b) Even those which are available on AMO, cannot be optimized (i.e. the engine's URL cannot be adapted). 
Example:
I downloaded YouTube search engine from https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/youtube-10423/
This engine has its unique preference (e.g. it sorts results on Youtube by relevance). If I wanted to modify the engine to search by video date upload (and not by relevance), this engine is not useful any more. If I was able to modify the engine's URL (just as I can already modify the keyword for it), this would have been truly useful.
The same goes, for example, for translating (e.g. Google Translate from AMO). The search engine (its default URL) cannot be edited. And because Google Translate's search engine from AMO is "universal", it redirects me to my "local Google Translate" URL every time. That means longer loading with no need.

2. Further, there is no option to enable/disable instant searching mode.
Currently, every search engine starts to search (to load results) after user hits enter. This is a "non-instant" (classic) mode.
a) Users should also be able to turn on/off the "instant" searching mode (if they wanted to). They would enable it for each individual search engine separately. That is to say: the "instant" search engine would start to search for a given term immediately (for example 200 milliseconds after user stops typing in location bar). So the search engine would not wait with loading until user hits enter. However, to finish the searching (e.g. to end with typing a search-term in location bar), user would still have to hit enter at the end. But the results would often seem to load faster on the screen.
b) With "instant mode" enabled, there would also be search suggestions appearing directly from browser's location bar, where possible (following the example of Google, Youtube, etc.). So user could use up/down arrows to choose the suggested result. So he often wouldn't have to type the whole search-term in location bar.


I hope these features will be implemented as soon as possible to speed up the browsing.

Comment 4

[Leon]

I'm sorry, I made one mistake in the upper explanation.

When I mentioned the search suggestions appearing from browser's location bar, I actually meant that:
- this feature should be always enabled (regardless of instant/non-instant mode), and
- this feature should enabled only on those search engines which are triggered by a keyword.

When a keyword is not used (i.e. when user is searching on the default search engine without a keyword), search suggestions would be disabled. This is because browser's location bar would be showing search-term's matches among bookmarks and history instead (as it has already been set). So in this case nothing would change.

Comment 5

[Andre Klapper]

(In reply to Leon from comment #0)
> Currently the address bar allows to search only with the default search
> engine.

Only if you type in your words directly without any modifier...

> 1.) Users should have option to add and set the abbreviations (short
> references), which would enable them to search with various search engines.

Users can already: By adding a "keyword" to their bookmarks.
There is also a search box which allows you to choose a different search engine with a single click.

Hence searching with abbreviations is already possible? (Though I'm not sure what "with abbreviations" means here exactly - clear steps to reproduce the problem are welcome.)

Comment 6

[Andre Klapper]

...or in other words: The bug report summary should describe a problem, not a solution to an undefined problem.

Comment 7

[Leon]

(In reply to Andre Klapper from comment #5)
> Users can already: By adding a "keyword" to their bookmarks.

I looked into additional bookmark options. You are right, I didn't know that. But if I'm not mistaken, there are still no crucial functionalities which I described before:
a) the option to enable "instant" search mode for each search engine, which would start searching for a given term immediately (automatically after a very short amount of time)
b) search suggestions appearing directly from browser's location bar, where possible (similar to Google's suggestions, see: https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/googlesuggestlocal.png).

> Hence searching with abbreviations is already possible?

Searching with abbrevations is already possible (I found this out just recently). With "abbrevations" I meant "keywords". What I meant specifically, is searching with keyword and using "%s" in URL (see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches).

However there are no additional features ("instant" search mode option and search suggestions). Besides, users need to save each custom search engine as a bookmark, which is not very intuitive in my opinion. All the search engine options should be gathered in one place (within about:preferences#search among other search engines), because these are not actual bookmarks, but searching optimizations.

(In reply to Andre Klapper from comment #6)
> The bug report summary should describe a problem, not a solution...
Okay, I will use "ideas" section in the future.

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Unfortunately not all engines/sites provide search suggestions, we can only provide them where the site provides it and the engine data gives it.

I'm not quite sure what you mean for instant search mode, the only thing I can think of there is actually loading and reloading the page as you type, I think that would be quite confusing for a user to see. Extracting the results to a suggestions list would be difficult as every website would be different.

The only thing that then remains is the potential to define your own search engines (in full) - you could still do that via add-ons and just sign the add-on via AMO, however I think we're unlikely to create this functionality for users as most people don't need/want to do that.