1332944 - Delay for omnibox.onInputChanged suggestions increases with text length

Status: REOPENED

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, defect, P3)

Description

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Using the following snippet:

browser.omnibox.onInputChanged.addListener((text, suggest) => {
  suggest([{
    content: "foo",
    description: "bar"
  },{
    content: "baz",
    description: "quux"
  }])
});

should be fast enough that results will be displayed instantly. I've made the following observations:

1) Entering 1-3 characters after the keyword is pretty much instant, but it flickers between typing characters because the item is removed and added again. Ideally the item should be re-used, so no flickering occurs

2) When entering 4 or more characters, there is a noticeable delay between typing the character and the items appearing. The more characters, the longer it takes.

Comment 1

[Matthew Wein [:mattw]]

Could you confirm whether the suggestions appear for the most part instantly after you stop typing? I suspect that the delay is due to the Awesome Bar waiting for the user to finish inputting text before processing it.

Comment 2

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Attachment: Screencast - v1

Other awesomebar results appear instantly, there is a delay only for the omnibox results. See attached screencast with me entering "amo cliqz". Full add-on code at https://github.com/kewisch/amo-helper/blob/master/webextension/background/omnibox.js if you can't reproduce using the snippet.

Comment 3

[bucklereed]

This is unscientific, but I think this might not strictly be an omnibox bug. While testing my WebExtension, I'm seeing several seconds of lag in my usual profile, with its other extensions, large pile of history, open tabs, etc--but I *don't* see lag in a fresh profile: long inputs get shown quickly.

Comment 4

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

This is an assigned P1 bug without activity in two weeks. 

If you intend to continue working on this bug for the current release/iteration/sprint, remove the 'stale-bug' keyword.

Otherwise we'll reset the priority of the bug back to '--' on Monday, August 28th.

Comment 5

[Gregory Pappas [:gregp]]

Reporter, is this still an issue?

Comment 6

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Yes, this is still occurring. Tested in a 2023-07-31 nightly.