1449207 - The buttons under the Custom URLs option are not displayed when searched

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Cristian Baica [:cbaica], Release Desktop QA]

Attachment: UseCurrentPage-search issue.mp4

[Affected versions]:
- Fx 61.0a1

[Affected platforms]:
-win 10 x64
-macOS X 10.13
-Ubuntu 10.04 LTS x64

[Steps to reproduce]:
1. Launch Firefox.
2. Go to the "about:preferences" page.
3. In the search box type in 'Use Current Page'.

[Actual result]:
- The 'Use Current Pages' button cannot be found by the search functionality.

[Expected result]:
- 'Use Current Pages' button is found and the menu and option that trigger it are correctly highlighted.

[Regression range]:
- This functionality was broken when the home page section layout was changed to a drop-down.
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=5ed5a088c7820c83ef3894b6067bc32dee483257&tochange=810204c29a4dec573c0070293792e95843d650b1


[Additional notes]:
- Please check the attachment for additional information on the issue.
- Please note that the other button 'Use Bookmark...' can't be found using the search box either.
- If the user chooses the 'Custom URLs' option in the 'Homepage and new windows' section, the button is correctly highlighted and displayed to the user.

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Kate, looks like this is a regression from bug 1417155 - could you take a look please? Thank you!

Comment 2

[Kate Hudson :k88hudson]

I think this behaviour might be as intended, since the "Current Pages..." UI is not intended to be shown unless the user has already chosen the "Custom URLs..." option – showing it outside of that scenario might cause weird behaviour with the rest of the UI, no?

What do you think Aaron? Do we have existing patterns for conditionally-shown UI outside of this case?

Comment 3

[Aaron Benson]

It appears to me that there is an existing pattern but it doesn't seem to apply to this specific case. For example, if you search for "custom", the search helper (yellow tooltip) will point you to the Homepage and New Windows dropdown list because there is a value for "Custom URLs" in the dropdown. Where highlighting the text is the direct search result, the tooltip indicates a setting that matches the search query somewhere within that form field and implies further digging into the UI.

I think the question is really whether we think "current page" is a common search term for this particular setting. I don't know if we have search data for prefs search, but it would be interesting to see if it ranks high in the list of used terms. 

If I had to guess, folks are probably searching for things like "new tab", "home" or "custom" to get at changing what they see on new tabs/windows and those searches would get them to where they want to go.

Comment 4

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

This could be useful if people are following a tutorial or looking at a screenshot of the UI.

To fix this bug we would just need to add the string IDs for the menuoption like we do here,
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/preferences/in-content/privacy.xul#81-88

Here's one example of a page that talks about the "Use Current Pages" text, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1071420

Comment 5

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Permalink for comment #4, https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/4114ad2cfcbc511705c7865a4a34741812f9a2a9/browser/components/preferences/in-content/privacy.xul#81-88

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.