1502920 - Add search shortcuts for bookmarks and open tabs

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

Let's add @bookmarks and @tabs to the list of search shortcuts (@amazon, @google, @ebay, etc.). These would work just like the * and % percent operators but would also show up in our list of shortcuts (Bug 1496815) and autocomplete as you type them (Bug 1499581).

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Erin, I've replaced myself with flod on purpose.

Also, I don't see any question for l10n here?

Comment 2

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

(In reply to Axel Hecht [:Pike] from comment #1)
> Erin, I've replaced myself with flod on purpose.
> 
> Also, I don't see any question for l10n here?

We're working on expanding search shortcuts https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/17/searching-made-faster-the-latest-firefox-exploration/ by adding special "@" keywords for other types of searches - namely @bookmarks and @tabs. 

Using nightly, you can get a sense of how these would work. If you type "@" in the address bar you get a list of these special search shortcuts. We're hoping to add @bookmarks and @tabs to that list. If you continue to type, they will autocomplete. These would work like typing "*" for bookmarks and "%" for tabs but we'd treat them like the other @ shortcuts (blue highlight, autocomplete, showing up in the list with the others).

We want these to be available in languages besides English and we need advice on how best to do that and challenges we might come across.

Comment 3

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

I assume we would need to localize these words ("bookmarks", "tabs"), otherwise the feature is hardly discoverable for international users.

The fist challenge (technical) is that some translations might have spaces in those, and I'm not sure how/if that would work
https://transvision.flod.org/string/?entity=browser/browser/preferences/preferences.ftl:tabs-group-header&repo=gecko_strings
https://transvision.flod.org/string/?entity=browser/browser/preferences/preferences.ftl:sync-engine-bookmarks.label&repo=gecko_strings

e.g.

@book mark something 

The other is that some of these translations are incredible long, which seems to defy the entire point of having a shortcut.

One other potential issue is the ability of writing in a specific language, e.g. I'm using the Gujarati version on a computer with an English keyboard, and it might be challenging (or impossible) to type @ટૅબ્સ in the address bar.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

We decided to not do this because of ther l10n problems, we introduce local one off buttons and shortcuts instead to achieve the same without having to type @bookmarks or such.