1420654 - Provide a two-click (faster) way to edit the default search engine

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Chris Cunningham]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20171112125346

Steps to reproduce:

Attempt to change the default search engine in some discoverable manner (as was possible prior to the change to the new one-click search system, and still possible up until Firefox 57 with extensions). The old workflow:

1. left-click the search icon in the searchbar
2. left-click the search engine to be used in the dropdown that appears


Actual results:

Minimum of three clicks now required to change the default search engine (up from two), with a rather smaller target than previously for the second one (a small icon in a horizonal row, rather than the full width of a dropdown column). The new workflow:

1. left-click the search icon in the searchbar
2. right-click the search engine to be used in the one-click button row
3. select "Set As Default Search Engine"


Expected results:

My typical use case for search is via the context menu search option (which uses the default search engine), rather than more cumbersome methods like copying text and then pasting it into the address bar (in order to use the one-click buttons to select an engine). Accordingly, the previous search UI (which allowed one to change the default search engine easily) was very helpful.

There should be some method (either a preference, or at least some programmatic approach) to make this as easy as it was previously.

It is still possible to approximate the appearance of the old UI, which is helpful:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6wpcxl/how_to_keep_classic_search_bar_and_contextmenu/

However, WebExtensions forbids any programmatic change to functionality such as how the search bar elements actually work. This means that even if one rearranges the widgets, one must still right-click the search engine to be used and select "Set As Default Search Engine" in the end.

(this is made even more painful by bug 1272292, which hides the most obvious way to check what engine is even being used).

"Add a preference" is never ideal, but the removal of classic extension support seems to have removed the alternative options here. This makes what I considered frequently-used functionality more cumbersome and far less discoverable.

Comment 1

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

I don't think there are any plans to change this UI right now, so this bug is probably a wontfix.  But there is a trick that I use to quickly change the default engine:  Ctrl-k to focus the search bar, and then Ctrl-up/down to cycle through the engines.  Each time you press Ctrl-up/down, you change the default.

Comment 2

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

Yeh while the old workflow was a valid one, its change was done on purpose and so we wont be switching it back