1562430 - Sometimes there's flickering when typing on the url bar

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P3)

Description

[Itiel]

STR:

1. Windows 10, latest Nightly, Quntumbar on
2. Be with an old enough profile so that entering a term on the url bar could theoretically fill the entire autocomplete popup with entries from the browsing history
3. Type that term (preferably not slowly) in the url bar

AR:
The autocomplete popup is filled with 9 suggestions based on the browsing history, then the last 4 of them are being cleared in favor of 4 search suggestions from the internet.

ER:
No flicker.

If you're unable to reproduce, pasting that term into the url bar usually makes this issue more reproducible.

Comment 1

[Itiel]

Attachment: Screencast

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I don't think there's much more we can do on top of what we already did here, we can't predict when results arrive, and IF they will arrive.

Comment 3

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [::mak] from comment #2)

we can't predict when results arrive, and IF they will arrive.

That's true, but other browsers face the same problem, and they don't flicker. We could at least look at what they're doing.

imo we may be overthinking this. Instead of preserving the old results in the popup and inserting new results as they arrive, we should maybe just wait a small timeout on each new search and then open the popup with whatever results have arrived by that time.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I'm not completely sure, Edge (non-chromium based) is the only browser that seems to do something similar to us, and it flickers similarly or even worse (I just tried).
Chrome provides completion to previously executed searches, that is local data, not remote. I'm not sure how to get search suggestions mixed with local results.
Safari IIRC splits remote suggestions in a separate section, so it's not a big deal.

We also have the problem of a lacking index, that means time for result n-th is also unpredictable.
We can surely change things, but that means also changing our primary goal that so far was "speed", thus returning results asap to the user.