1228685 - Show dropdown indicator for selecting searchengines if mouse over search bar/box or permanently (not only for icon hovering)

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

The old search bar showed the dropdown indicator next to search engine permanently. The new one only shows it if the user moves the mouse over it. This makes it hard to recognize that the search engine can be selected before typing the search term (and pressing Enter).

Enhancement request: Show the indicator either permanently or when the user moves the focus over the search bar.

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Would this enhancement address the pain you were referring to on Twitter?

Comment 2

[Mike Habicher [:mikeh] (high bugzilla latency)]

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) - PTO from Dec 23 - Jan 4 from comment #1)

> Would this enhancement address the pain you were referring to on Twitter?

It would! It would also be very helpful to have a way to persist the selected search engine. Now that I've given in and am using Firefox 43, here's what I'm encountering:

1. type in search query
2. select Wikipedia
3. page loads -- and it's a long one
4. read long page, type follow-up query into search bar
5. oops, the search went to my default search engine, instead of Wikipedia which I was just on

I could certainly have hit [Home] and returned to the top of the first Wikipedia page to locate its own search box and type my follow-up query in there -- but there's already a search box at the top of my browser chrome. Why can't I use that?

If the issue really is that people get confused by their default search engine changing, here's an idea: persist the current search engine for as long as I remain on that engine's page. i.e. keep Wikipedia as my current SE until I leave Wikipedia.

(Another issue I've run into is that now that the search provider options are stacked horizontally -- and, as it turns out, vertically, if you add enough of them -- it becomes very easy to accidentally hit the "Add <new search engine>" option, and the UI does not have an easy way to remove all of the ones I have accidentally added. The benefit of the old UI was that the options were essentially infinitely wide, and so were easy to hit with relatively crude mouse motions.)

Comment 3

[Mike Habicher [:mikeh] (high bugzilla latency)]

mconley, also to follow-up with our more recent discussion, up until now the flow has been:

1. pick search engine
2. type query
3. press [Enter]

I've got something like a decade of muscle memory going for me on this, and a more detailed flow looks like this:

1. decide to search for something
2. grab mouse and move pointer to upper right
3. while moving pointer, determine if current search engine is the one I want
   a. if it is, land pointer on text area of search bar and click
   b. if it is not, land pointer on search provider icon, click, move to new provider, click
4. move hands from mouse to keyboard
5. type query and press [Enter].

With the new search bar, this looks like:

1. decide to search for something
2. grab mouse and move pointer to upper right
3. I remember that my default search provider is Google, and I want to search Google, so I land on the text area of the search bar and click
4. move hands from mouse to keyboard
5. type query and press [Enter].

This is pretty much the same. Where the flow gets more complex is if I DON'T want to search Google:

1. decide to search for something
2. grab mouse and move pointer to upper right
3. I remember that my default search provider is Google, but I don't want to search Google, so I land on the icon, click, pick my desired provider (e.g. Wikipedia), and click

(...and this is where everything falls apart for me...)

   a. IF the search box is empty, Firefox loads the default Wikipedia search page
   b. IF the search box is NOT empty, Firefox sends a query to Wikipedia for the existing search box contents.

In either case, the cursor does not move into the search box, which is what I would expect it to do. Furthermore, if I'm lucky in step 3a, the target web page has moved the cursor to its own newly-loaded search box. Wikipedia does this, but it looks like eBay does not. The former is more helpful, but in both cases, the point of my focus has been yanked somewhere else. It feels like when a background app steals foreground focus while I'm typing -- it's jarring.

Further to step 3b, let's say I click on the search box to modify the incorrect query I sent to Wikipedia -- then I press [Enter] to execute it. The search instead goes to my default provider, not the provider I just explicitly selected. This is beyond jarring -- it's angry-making. My browser is fighting with me.

Even in the best case, where I remember that I need to type first, then click on the desired search provider after, the flow requires an annoying mouse-keyboard-mouse bounce:

1. decide to search for something
2. grab mouse and move pointer to upper right
3. I remember that my default search provider is Google, but I don't want to search Google, but I also remember that I need to type my query first THEN click on my desired search provider, so I land on the text area and click
4. move hands from mouse to keyboard
5. type query -- remember NOT to press [Enter]!
6. move hands from keyboard back to mouse
7. click on Wikipedia

All of the above flows are slower, more complicated, and require a larger cognitive load that the old search bar.

To elaborate on my idea in comment 2, I view the search box as an extension of my currently active search engine. When it changes unexpectedly -- violating the principle of least astonishment -- things feel very broken.

Comment 4

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Thanks mikeh - filed bug 1236966, and I'll kick off a discussion on firefox-dev.

Comment 5

[:shell escalante]

stephen - add to your list of UX decisions on behavior.  just need info'd you to know we're tagging UX needed for you to look through to see about a group of UX things