Closed Bug 1221866 Opened 9 years ago Closed 9 years ago

browser.search.showOneOffButtons doesn't work in 43+

Categories

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Search
Version:
43 Branch
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED INVALID

People

(Reporter: fireattack, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20151103023037

Steps to reproduce:

Title said all basically.

Set it to false, still get new search bar layout.


Actual results:

It should use old layout.
+1

This is especially important for people using engines which do not have a favicon:
the old layout displayed the search engine name, so the lack of favicon was not a problem.

Besides, browser.search.showOneOffButtons should not be buried in about:config, but available as an option.
I also prefer the old version to the new one. In the old version you could select a search engine, start typing and then see the suggestions for that search engine. In the new version this is not possible, only by changing the default search engine. Also seeing the full names is useful - I have 3 different languages of Wikipedia in my search engines and the only way to distinguish between them is by looking at the names.
Component: Layout → Search
Product: Core → Firefox
Version: 40 Branch → 43 Branch
The pref was removed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1119250 

Please don't spam the bug about bringing it back, its not going to happen. 

I believe you can use the CTR (ClassicThemeRestorer) to get the 'old' behavior back.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 9 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
(In reply to Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11 from comment #3)
> The pref was removed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1119250 
> 
> Please don't spam the bug about bringing it back, its not going to happen. 
> 
> I believe you can use the CTR (ClassicThemeRestorer) to get the 'old'
> behavior back.

Why it's got removed in the 1st place?
(In reply to Benjamin Peng from comment #4)
> (In reply to Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11 from comment #3)
> > The pref was removed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1119250 
> > 
> > Please don't spam the bug about bringing it back, its not going to happen. 
> > 
> > I believe you can use the CTR (ClassicThemeRestorer) to get the 'old'
> > behavior back.
> 
> Why it's got removed in the 1st place?

the InContent panel was deemed finished and its too much work to maintain parallel, redundant Option Panels, thus the 'fall-back' till finished pref was removed.
>the InContent panel was deemed finished and its too much work to maintain parallel, redundant Option Panels, thus the 'fall-back' till finished pref was removed.

Ok, so no bug. Where should improvements to the new layout be suggested?

To recover the former usability AND accomodate the new stuff, the last engine selected by the user should be default. At least, this could be an option.

It is also unfortunate that the user cannot see anymore which engine is default (at a glance).

see comments by Gerd & Yaron in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1119250
I think you can right click an engine and set as default from there.
Btw, Jim is right, please file bugs in Firefox / Search if you have specific improvements in mind that apply to the new UI, they will be evaluated apart. If you want to discuss the merit of decisions please post to the firefox-dev mailing list instead, but I think this has been discussed over and over already, so I doubt there's much to add.
Thank you for your feedback.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
The search box was the primary reason I used Firefox. I'm clueless why it got removed. It makes no sense to get enforced <primary search engine> autocomplete results when you use specialized search engines on a daily basis. All it does is send possible sensitive data to the wrong search engine.
http://i.imgur.com/5tOVUf7.png
Can't even show all my search options
**** you mozilla!
(In reply to Marc from comment #8)
> It makes no sense to get enforced <primary search engine>
> autocomplete results when you use specialized search engines on a daily
> basis. All it does is send possible sensitive data to the wrong search
> engine.

I'm not sure what's "enforced" about the auto-complete results. You can disable them by right-clicking on the search box and unchecking "Show suggestions".
(In reply to Gabriel from comment #9)
> http://i.imgur.com/5tOVUf7.png
> Can't even show all my search options

I would encourage you to file a bug about having better UI for dealing with a large number of search engines. Throwing around profanity doesn't move anything forward.
(In reply to Botond Ballo [:botond] from comment #11)
> (In reply to Gabriel from comment #9)
> > http://i.imgur.com/5tOVUf7.png
> > Can't even show all my search options
> 
> I would encourage you to file a bug about having better UI for dealing with
> a large number of search engines. Throwing around profanity doesn't move
> anything forward.

I'm not that guy, but are we actually accept suggestions (other than bugs) here? What if we make tickets to suggest bring old search UI back?
(In reply to Benjamin Peng from comment #12)
> I'm not that guy, but are we actually accept suggestions (other than bugs)
> here? What if we make tickets to suggest bring old search UI back?

If you file an issue, whether it's for a bug or an enhancement, it will at least be triaged. The outcome of the triage might be "this is important, we'll fix/implement it", or "this isn't important enough to spend the front-end team's time on, but contributions are welcome", or "we don't want to maintain this in mainline Firefox code, it should be done in an add-on instead", but either way you at least know what to expect.

In the specific case of bringing the old search UI back, given comment 3 I strongly suspect it will fall into the third category. 

However, that doesn't preclude a tweak to the new UI to be more friendly to having a large number of search engines, which is what I was suggesting filing an issue about.
(In reply to Botond Ballo [:botond] from comment #13)
> (In reply to Benjamin Peng from comment #12)
> > I'm not that guy, but are we actually accept suggestions (other than bugs)
> > here? What if we make tickets to suggest bring old search UI back?
> 
> If you file an issue, whether it's for a bug or an enhancement, it will at
> least be triaged. The outcome of the triage might be "this is important,
> we'll fix/implement it", or "this isn't important enough to spend the
> front-end team's time on, but contributions are welcome", or "we don't want
> to maintain this in mainline Firefox code, it should be done in an add-on
> instead", but either way you at least know what to expect.
> 
> In the specific case of bringing the old search UI back, given comment 3 I
> strongly suspect it will fall into the third category. 
> 
> However, that doesn't preclude a tweak to the new UI to be more friendly to
> having a large number of search engines, which is what I was suggesting
> filing an issue about.

Call me salty or whatever, what's the advantage of the new search bar that is worth "spending the front-end team's time on"?
I was also upset to discover the removal of this feature. I came here thinking that the update to Firefox 43.0.1 had resulted in browser.search.showOneOffButtons being ignored (I have set it to false shortly after the introduction of the new menu), and discovering that the classic menu has been removed altogether is a great disappointment.

Three things that bother me the most with the new menu:
1. visual noise of the menu which pops unrequested 
2. prevents from selecting search engine **before** typing the search, this is counter-intuitive to me
3. loss of information (search engine name) with the display of icons only (rarely distinctive enough)

Quoting a blog post from March 2015 by Thomas Byttebier on this last point:

“So let me repeat: don’t use an icon if its meaning isn’t a 100% clear to everyone. When in doubt, skip the icon. Reside to simple copy. A text label is always clearer.

If you want to keep the graphical advantages of icons, you can of course combine the icon with copy. It’s an excellent solution that unites the best of both worlds.”

http://thomasbyttebier.be/blog/the-best-icon-is-a-text-label
The new search basically destroys search suggestions for non-default engines.
1. You can only get suggestions from the default engine.
2. Clicking a suggestion causes a search to made with the default engine.

I have a lot of specialized search engines like Wikipedia, YouTube, MSDN, translation engines etc. I can not replace these engines with single default engine. I also use different search engines regularly.

ClassicThemeRestorer is nice but it has its shortcomings. It does not support opening search in a new tab when I click a search engine with the middle mouse button, for example.

I would really appreciate it if the old search UI is restored. Releasing a plugin based directly on the old search UI code also seems like a good solution.
In regards to useability, the search no longer works as expected resulting in various annoyances such as:
- sites being opened to their default pages before the search is completed (it's faster to click on the site link and type in the search column than to use the search bar)
- opening a search on the wrong site
- inability to select the correct site for searching when the favicon is the same (e.g., having a gentoo forums post / gentoo forums thread search plugins or amazon.com / amazon.co.jp search plugins)
- as the user above stated, one default engine is insufficient for users who have and use a lot of specialised search engines plugins

Also the new search is visually noisy. The identical icons make search plugins useless. Did no designer consider ambiguous icons when removing the text options? http://projectsoft.org/moz/images/bssoob_fail.png

Please re-enable the browser.search.showoneoffbuttons boolean.
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