1464857 - Address bar suggests search before history, even with the setting turned off

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1464154

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P5)

Description

[echosa]

Attachment: search results above history

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180517114003

Steps to reproduce:

I typed "fac<RETURN>" into the address bar.


Actual results:

I'm taken to a DuckDuckGo search for the term "fac". 


Expected results:

I should be taken to Facebook.

Comment 1

[echosa]

Additional comments: 

I have the setting to have search results above other suggestions turned off. In fact, it's greyed out for some reason.

It seems like this might be related to these:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1239708
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1439176
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443229

Comment 2

[echosa]

Attachment: Search settings with disabled, greyed out option

Comment 3

[echosa]

Forgot to say this already, and there's no editing of previous comments, so I'll make another comment (sorry if it seems like comment spam). The expected behavior is what I'm used to. It has worked that way for years, and is very much engrained in my muscle memory. I don't exactly know when it changed, but I should state that I've moved from macOS to Pop!_OS (Ubuntu-based Linux), and have only noticed this since. I can't say for certain that that's part of the cause, but I felt it worth mentioning since, when trying to think "what changed", the OS change is the main thing that has.

Comment 4

[Gingerbread Man]

You can enter about:config?filter=keyword.enabled into the address bar, then set the preference in question to false. This will disable searching from the address bar without a search engine keyword prefix (e.g. d foobar <Enter> for DuckDuckGo will still work).
If you've previously visited a particular domain, it should then be autofilled and listed as the first drop-down entry, so you can just press Enter after typing a few letters. However, if you haven't visited the domain, you'll get a useless "http://example/ — Visit" entry, which isn't a valid address.

Comment 5

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

After you start visiting facebook.com regularly, at some point it should start to be autofilled/autocompleted in the location bar again, as Gingerbread Man says.  Are you still seeing the problem?  If so, could you please try this a few times: type facebook.com into the location bar and press the return key.  At some point it should start to be autofilled again.

Comment 6

[echosa]

Ok, so I've tried a few things in both the current release of Firefox as well as Nightly. Here's what I've found. 

I have `keyword.enabled` set to true for both.

In Firefox, if I type "f" or "fa", the first option in the results is Fastmail, so simply pressing enter takes me to Fastmail. If I add an "s", to get "fas", Fastmail is still the top option. However, if instead of an "s" I add a "c", to get "fac", the "Search for 'fac'" is the top option, with Facebook being second. So perhaps I just need to visit Facebook more, but I go there several times a day. I would expect that to be enough. 

I tried spamming "facebook.com" in new tabs several times, but nothing changed.

However, in Nightly, "f" and "fa" both get me Facebook as the top option. I've been using Nightly lately, for other reasons, but it seems to also "fix" this particular issue for me.

Based on what you both have said and what I'm seeing in my testing, it does seem like it might just be an issue with Firefox not quite being trained properly or not having learned properly (yet). I'll keep an eye on it, but with using Nightly as my default browser, I don't really run into this issue anymore, except when I use Firefox itself (on occasion).

Comment 7

[Gerald Squelart (he/him) (not at Mozilla since 2022-09-15)]

I'm seeing the same issue I think:
In FF60 and beta 61, I could type "you" (for example), and "youtube.com" would be the first choice so I could just press enter.
In Nightly 62, "you - search with duckduckgo" is now the first choice.

If I keep typing, when I reach "youtube.c", now the first option is just "visit", so I still can't press enter.

For me, this is a massive regression because my muscle memory is trained to just type a few letters + enter for lots of my frequently-visited websites, and now I have to either suffer through a search page, or take a moment to find my preferred website in the drop-down.

I've tried changing options in Preferences->Search, and keyword.enabled, and following comment 5, but nothing helps.

Sad to see it's P5, please reconsider.

Comment 8

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Gerald Squelart [:gerald] from comment #7)
> I'm seeing the same issue I think:
> In FF60 and beta 61, I could type "you" (for example), and "youtube.com"
> would be the first choice so I could just press enter.
> In Nightly 62, "you - search with duckduckgo" is now the first choice.
> 
> If I keep typing, when I reach "youtube.c", now the first option is just
> "visit", so I still can't press enter.

There was a bug in autofill that we think we fixed.
After a few times you type and pick the right page it should learn your habits. IF it still doesn't work in the latest Nightly, please report your specific case in bug 1464154.

Comment 9

[echosa]

(In reply to Gerald Squelart [:gerald] from comment #7)
> I'm seeing the same issue I think:
> In FF60 and beta 61, I could type "you" (for example), and "youtube.com"
> would be the first choice so I could just press enter.
> In Nightly 62, "you - search with duckduckgo" is now the first choice.
> 
> If I keep typing, when I reach "youtube.c", now the first option is just
> "visit", so I still can't press enter.
> 
> For me, this is a massive regression because my muscle memory is trained to
> just type a few letters + enter for lots of my frequently-visited websites,
> and now I have to either suffer through a search page, or take a moment to
> find my preferred website in the drop-down.
> 
> I've tried changing options in Preferences->Search, and keyword.enabled, and
> following comment 5, but nothing helps.
> 
> Sad to see it's P5, please reconsider.

This seems somewhat opposite to my experience. For you, versions 60 and 61 work fine but Nightly/62 does not. For me, 60 and 61 don't work right, but Nightly/62 works fine. Also, as I said earlier, it depends on the site. 60/61 work fine for Fastmail for me, for instance. In 60/61 "fa" gets me Fastmail, not a search entry, while "fac" gets me a search entry. In Nightly, "f", "fa", and "fac" all get me Facebook. It's all very strange and confusing.

Comment 10

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Nightly has a new autofill algorithm.