1567753 - Search engine list wraps around

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P5)

Description

[spam.drainer]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

Using the keyboard shortcuts to cycle through the list of available search engines.

Actual results:

The search engine list does not stop at the first or last entry anymore, but instead wraps around. This severely hampers the predictable non-mouse use of the search engine field, as one never stops at either end by using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+<arrow up> / Ctrl+<arrow down> in my case).

Expected results:

The search engine list shall stop cycling at either end, as it did before.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Please can you explain a few more of the steps you're using, so that we can understand the actual issue?

For example:

1. Click in the search bar (or address bar - it is useful to know exactly which one)
2. Type something
3. Press ...

Comment 2

[spam.drainer]

Steps:

1. Activate the search box, should it not be shown already.
2. Click the search box, so that the cursor is placed within it.
3. Press and hold Ctrl+↑ or Ctrl+↓, until keyboard repetition kicks in.

By doing this, one cycles through the available search engines (the list behaves like a ring buffer).

Some Firefox releases ago, the search engine list would not cycle endlessly, but stop at the first (when holding Ctrl+↑) or last (Ctrl+↓) entry. This was very convenient, as the one could blindly select the desired search engine for one's query just by using the keyboard.

Now, this is nearly impossible due to the ring-buffer-behavior. Also, there is no obvious advantage for having the search engine list cycle like this.

I vote for returning to the original behavior, i.e. stop at the first/last entry in the list of available search engines.

Comment 3

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

The priority flag is not set for this bug.
:daleharvey, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 4

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

Not entirely certain this isnt invalid / desired behaviour, will take a look at what caused the change, but either way its fairly low priority, not obvious what the preferred behaviour should be on not very visible ui