1526589 - Loading search suggestions causes jank on low-bandwidth high-latency connections

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P2)

Description

[esmyth]

Environment:
Firefox 66.0b5, Windows 10.0.17134.523, American Airlines WiFi (ViaSat, 5.5 Mbps, 597ms latency)

Steps to reproduce:

1. Type (e.g., foo) in AwesomeBar

Observed results:
History and current tab results show instantly. Search suggestions take > 1s to load and cause a five result row jank when the load. The jank may result in users clicking on the incorrect search results

Expected results:
No jank. Approaches like content placeholders or changes in ordering (i.e. search results below history results) would be preferable

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Did you try this with non-QuantumBar?

I suspect the 597ms latency has something to do with this, and I'd be surprised if it didn't affect the current release in some way.

Comment 2

[esmyth]

I just double checked my config. I was mistaken, this was an issue on the awesome bar, not the quantum bar.

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I can't reproduce, if you can reproduce at will, it would be nice to get a performance profile, see https://profiler.firefox.com/

Without a profile we can't tell what's up, it may also just be the system busy due to some other app and Firefox fighting for resources...

Comment 4

[esmyth]

I do not have an easy way to create the conditions to reproduce the issue. If needed, I could try to artificially create similar network conditions and capture a profile, but I won't have time to do so for a while.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Reproducing this is tricky, so it sounds like not actionable for now. Hopefully one day someone can report a reproducible case or a profile :(

Comment 6

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I'm going to reopen this. It's pretty easy to notice, if you have suggestions showing first and a term that quickly matches. Basically we show a full set of history results, then update the list with four suggestions, pushing down the results. I can easily reproduce by typing "sql" because I have so many Redash links in history. If latency is low it's minor but ugly. If it's higher it'll be a crappy UX.

High level, this is pretty ugly. It's not new to QB, but the QB impl still shows it.