1522278 - When autofilling, try to detect whether the user deleted text instead of checking whether the old search string starts with the new search string

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

When a new search query starts, we disable autofill if the old search string starts with the new search string. That's because when the user deletes text at the end of the input, we don't want to autofill the same value that the user just deleted. Marco suggests we should do better and try to detect when the user has actually deleted text instead of, or instead of only, doing the string comparison.

See https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D17040?vs=54236&id=54559&whitespace=ignore-most#inline-93568

I'll mark this as a P3 since it's not required for MVP imo, since the current behavior is what the legacy controller does. Also, I'm not sure it's even possible or a good idea to try and detect all the ways the user can delete text.

Comment 1

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

(In reply to Drew Willcoxon :adw from comment #0)

Also, I'm not sure it's even possible or a good idea to try
and detect all the ways the user can delete text.

I'm having success (so far) using nsIEditActionListener: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/6dab6dad9cc852011a14275a8b2c2c03ed7600a7/editor/nsIEditActionListener.idl

Comment 2

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Attachment: Bug 1522278 - Use nsIEditActionListener to detect when the user deletes autofilled substrings.

A little hacky, see discussion in phabricator.

Comment 3

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=1c298d38d32840c8fa5e2b7470a384602a7417c8

Comment 4

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=719c014435c1d9f9eb01c94b1cdf69b5fe9cc335

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/47050699cd5c
Use nsIEditActionListener to detect when the user deletes autofilled substrings. r=mak

Comment 6

[Andreea Pavel [:apavel]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/47050699cd5c