1526983 - Search engines proposed when using the @ letter are not my search engines / expand aliases

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P3)

Description

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

Attachment: wrongSearchEngines.mp4

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0 ID:20190211092917

If you type @ in the address bar, a list of search engines is proposed. These search engines are not the ones I am using, they are not even the ones proposed in a default fr build.

I am attaching a screencast to show the difference between what my preferences are and what the @ keyword is listing.

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

The suggested engines are the default ones, maybe you disabled those (or some of them)?

I'm not surewhat's the expected behavior re: disabled engines, Drew?

Comment 2

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

yes I configured my search engines but the list above isn't the list of default search engines for the French build, for example Qwant is a default search engine in French builds yet it is not listed.

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I don't think that every default engine has an @ alias... Drew can tell you more about this topic anyway.

Comment 4

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

First, there's a small, hardcoded list of built-in @ aliases. If an engine isn't in that list, then it won't show up when you type @ -- unless you manually add an alias for it that starts with @, which you can do in prefs. That explains why the engines shown in your prefs don't show up when you type @. The list is here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/00c0d068ece99717bea7475f7dc07e61f7f35984/toolkit/components/search/nsSearchService.js#953

I don't know much about how/why this list was chosen or whether we'll add to it. Mike would know more about that, CC'ing him.

Second, the urlbar uses the aliases of all installed engines, even hidden ones. When you remove a built-in/default engine from prefs, it actually just marks it hidden. (I'm not 100% sure about that, but it looks like it based on the search service code and what you're seeing.) That explains why the hidden built-in engines do show up when you type @.

That's probably a bug in the urlbar. It should probably not use aliases for hidden engines. I'll file another bug for that.

Comment 5

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

(In reply to Drew Willcoxon :adw from comment #4)

That's probably a bug in the urlbar. It should probably not use aliases for
hidden engines. I'll file another bug for that.

Actually, Mike, let me ask you about that here because it looks like you worked on this part too, in bug 1480504. In that bug you said you thought that aliases should still work for hidden engines (bug 1480504 comment 2). Do you still think so? It does seem a little strange that engines I "removed" continue to show up, as Pascal says.

We register @ aliases for the urlbar (UnifiedComplete actually) here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/00c0d068ece99717bea7475f7dc07e61f7f35984/toolkit/components/places/PlacesSearchAutocompleteProvider.jsm#93 There's a !engine.hidden check right above that, so maybe that should be extended to registering aliases, too?

Comment 6

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I don't think so anymore. We can remove aliases if the engines are hidden.

As far as adding additional aliases in, we can't do every one, but qwant probably makes sense.

Comment 7

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

OK, I'll file a bug for possibly adding Qwant and another one for not showing the aliases of hidden engines. We could use this bug for one or the other, but it's probably clearer to have separate bugs since this one is really about both.

Comment 10

[Dominik Danelski]

Wouldn't it be better to just load the list of search engines from user's preferences instead of improving the hardcoded values? It doesnt't really solve the problem, but rather reduces the number of people affected by it.

Comment 11

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

From a technical and product view, yes definitely, but there are other concerns like business/legal/contractual obligations too, as I understand it.

Comment 12

[Dominik Danelski]

What may prevent a search engine from being added specifically to this feature, but not from being bundled with Firefox or just added by a user? After all Firefox allows to summon search engines by keywords and frankly that functionality is very similar.

Comment 14

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 3 duplicates.
:adw, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

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