1320449 - Keyboard predictions not working in URL bar

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Keyboards and IME, defect)

Description

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Can anybody remember why we turn off keyboard input suggestions on the URL bar?
(https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b982373cb0e953976fd45f342910d1d1ea123fbb/mobile/android/base/resources/layout/toolbar_edit_layout.xml#33)?

For URLs per se having the keyboard's own suggestiosn not be strictly necessary, since the URL bar does its own autocompletion from history anyway (although my old phone was slow enough that quite often the keyboard's [1] suggestion would come in faster), but when entering search terms I'd think that the keyboard's text prediction might be quite useful.

If we decide to implement this, we might still want to turn off predictions off during private browsing (see bug 1266683).

On a note of comparison, I've found some older complaints about input suggestions being disabled on some keyboards in Chrome as well, but checking with their current version it seems that they are no longer turning suggestions off and are only using inputType="textUri" for their URL bar.

[1] It seems that some keyboards, e.g. the stock keyboard on older Samsung phones or Swiftkey ignore textNoSuggestions and display predictions anyway, which explains why I've never noticed this problem myself.

Comment 1

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Can anybody remember why we turn off keyboard input suggestions on the URL bar?
(https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b982373cb0e953976fd45f342910d1d1ea123fbb/mobile/android/base/resources/layout/toolbar_edit_layout.xml#33)?

For URLs per se having the keyboard's own suggestions may not be strictly necessary, since the URL bar does its own autocompletion from history anyway (although my old phone was slow enough that quite often the keyboard's [1] suggestion would come in faster), but when entering search terms I'd think that having the keyboard's text prediction would be quite useful.

If we decide to implement this, we might however still want to turn off predictions off during private browsing (see bug 1266683).

On a note of comparison, I've found some older complaints about input suggestions being disabled on some keyboards in Chrome as well, but checking with their current version it seems that they are no longer turning suggestions off and are only using inputType="textUri" for their URL bar.

[1] It seems that some keyboards, e.g. the stock keyboard on older Samsung phones or Swiftkey ignore textNoSuggestions and display predictions anyway, which explains why I've never noticed this problem myself.

Comment 2

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Attachment: Bug 1320449 - Enable keyboard text prediction on the awesome bar during normal browsing.

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/95768/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/95768/

Comment 3

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Comment on attachment 8814615 [details]
Bug 1320449 - Enable keyboard text prediction on the awesome bar during normal browsing.

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/95768/#review96444

With the default Google keyboard I see no difference. However on the Sony Z3C I see suggestions now. I was a bit afraid that this will lead to the keyboard suggesting all kinds of URLs instead of actual words in various places - but this doesn't seem to happen, at least on the Sony phone.

Comment 4

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Oh right, looks like Google's keyboard turns off predictions anway for URI input - nothing we can do about that then.

(In reply to Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian) from comment #3)
> I was a bit afraid that this will lead to the
> keyboard suggesting all kinds of URLs instead of actual words in various
> places - but this doesn't seem to happen, at least on the Sony phone.

Mirrors my experience with Swiftkey and the Samsung keyboard (although the latter was - or still is? - just a repackaged version of Swiftkey anyway, at least as far as the prediction logic is concerned).

Comment 5

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=e7e4b4efc1c4721718987ef4af8c95dca9af38f6&selectedJob=32020158

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3118e664715b
Enable keyboard text prediction on the awesome bar during normal browsing. r=sebastian

Comment 7

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/3118e664715b

Comment 8

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

(In reply to Jan Henning [:JanH] from comment #1)
> Can anybody remember why we turn off keyboard input suggestions on the URL
> bar?

Just stumbled upon bug 719527 - This and the linked bugs in comment 0 might have some history.

Comment 9

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

(In reply to Jan Henning [:JanH] from comment #1)
> Can anybody remember why we turn off keyboard input suggestions on the URL
> bar?

The predictions block a line of awesome bar results. On the smallest screen sizes that we support that can result in only couple results between the keyboard, search suggestion prompt, search line and the search bar at the bottom. Even on my Nexus 5x I end up with 3.5 results on the screen with all those bars enabled. Adding the keyboard autocomplete would take at least .5 if not 1 search result away.