1483209 - accessibility.typeaheadfind / accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart configuration variables are now utterly ignored

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 254592

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect)

Description

[spillner]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0
Build ID: 20180704192850

Steps to reproduce:

1. Load about:config and manually override accessibility.typeaheadfind and/or accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart to false.
2. Visit any other page.
3. Do NOT have the cursor focus in a text entry field.
4. Press the apostrophe (') or forward-slash (/) keys.
5. Notice that the 'quick find' search bar appears at the bottom-left of the page, and (more importantly) your apostrophe or forward-slash keypress was NOT passed through to any script on the page (unless they're manually overloading the document.keydown handler).
6. Do some web searches and conclude that there is no other way to inhibit/override this behavior, even though typeaheadfind is apparently a common source of bugs and user frustration.
7. Check Bugzilla and see that this is essentially the same issue reported in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=254592 and unfixed for over fourteen years.  Filing under a new number and title to clarify the exact issue (manual configuration utterly ignored) and because aside from a pulse last year 254592 appears to be a dead issue.
8. Softly weep.


Actual results:

The 'quick find' bar appears at the bottom of the page regardless of preferences settings.


Expected results:

Having at least one or the other, or at the very least BOTH, of the named settings set to 'false' should inhibit Quick find entirely.  Users with these manual settings are presumably content with the standard find-in-page dialog normally bound to ctrl-F, and at any rate apparently have a reason for not wanting apostrophes and slashes intercepted.

Comment 1

[spillner]

There are also references sprinkled throughout the codebase to an old accessibility.typeaheadfind.manual setting (including a test in https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/content/tests/browser/browser_findbar_disabled_manual.js) that was apparently intended to do what typeaheadfind and typeaheadfind.autostart do not, but that too is now vestigial and no longer even appears in the about:config menu.  Working on a patch to simplify down to a single boolean enabled/disabled variable (accessibility.typeaheadfind) that inhibits /all/ quick-find dialog triggers when set to false, unless someone can explain the use cases for multiple mysteriously-named sub-settings.

Comment 2

[Gingerbread Man]

Please don't intentionally file duplicates, especially not for reports that are still open. accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart not working was already noted in bug 254592, comment 16, at which point the priority was increased.