1650434 - Search suggestions from history lose the keyword

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P3)

Description

[quasicomputational]

Attachment: history-search.png

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to about:preferences#search.
2. Give Wikipedia the 'w' keyword.
3. Type 'w foobar' in the omnibox and press enter.
4. Type 'w foo' in the omnibox.
5. Arrow down to the 'foobar' entry.

Expected result: the omnibox would show 'w foobar'.

Actual result: the omnibox shows 'foobar' (i.e., without the keyword).

For suggestions from the provider, the keyword is preserved.

The two attached images show the difference: history-search.png is using the historic search and is missing the keyword, and suggestion-search.png is using the suggestion from Wikipedia and has the keyword present.

Comment 1

[quasicomputational]

Attachment: suggestion-search.png

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

The behavio looks correct to me, you search for "foobar" on Wikipedia, the historical search makes you search "foobar" on wikipedia. You didn't search for "w foobar".
Historical searches are based on what was actually searched.

The bug instead seems to be that other search suggestions should NOT retain the keyword/alias, because it's clear from the suggestions that we sent the string to engine without the keyword in front.

Comment 3

[quasicomputational]

No, I think that the URL bar should reflect what I would type in to the URL bar to have gotten that search. Otherwise, this sequence of events becomes weird:

1. Type 'w foo' in the URL bar.
2. Arrow down to the historical search 'foobar'.
3. Arrow right and type in 'baz'.
4. Hit enter.

Then the search goes to the default engine, because the 'w' keyword isn't there! That's very, very surprising behaviour.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

it should not go to the default engine because the engine is part of the result itself.

Comment 5

[quasicomputational]

Well, that's what's happening to me today by following those steps, so evidently there's another bug there.

I think that the cleanest solution is to keep the keyword, so that it's obvious what will happen when I press enter from the contents of the URL bar alone, and it's resilient to editing the query (e.g., what if I decide I don't want to use the 'w' keyword, but instead to change it to another search engine on the fly?).