1664502 - Amazon.de records an amazon.com entry in TopFrecentSites

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Top Sites, defect, P1)

Description

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu] [PTO until Aug 26]]]

[Sugested Severity:]

In this case, it seems that this might be an intended behaviour and not recent from what I can tell. Fx 75 works this way as well.
Based on the above and on the impact on the TopSites migration to Remote settings, I'm suggesting an S2 as a proposed severity.

[Description:]

Accessing a https://www.amazon.de/ logs amazon.com as a recent/frecvent topsite.
This causes that in the case of which amazon.de is set as a topsite from RemoteSettings controlled collection, at the next restart, the default amazon.de to be owerwritten by amazon.com

[Environment:]

Windows 10, Mac 10.15, Ubuntu 20.
81.0b9
80
could reproduce as far as 75

[Steps:]

1. Download, install Firefox and create a new profile.
2. In address bar, input https://www.amazon.de
3. Open browser console with console enabled and run:
   Cu.import("resource://gre/modules/NewTabUtils.jsm");
   (await NewTabUtils.activityStreamProvider.getTopFrecentSites({numItems: 25})).map(s => ${s.url} [${s.frecency}]).join("\n")
4. Restart Firefox.

[Actual Result:]

The step 3 snippet will return amazon.com
For the modern top-sites Remote Settings feature, if topsite was direct link amazon.de after restart it is replaced by amazon.com

[Expected Result:]

I would assume that when amazon.de is default topsite, it would remain default topsite, especially since no actual amazon.com has been accessed, but there might be context that I'm not aware of.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Mak or mardak, any idea how amazon.com ends up in the frecency list without ever opening it?

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Looking at history data, it properly contains amazon.de with frecency 2000... There must be some transformation on the newtab side...

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

My suspect is improvesearch.topSiteSearchShortcuts.searchEngines, so that the AS code is replacing amazon.de with the amazon.com search shortcut.

Probably here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/62c443a7c801ba9672de34c2867ec1665a4bbe67/toolkit/modules/NewTabUtils.jsm#1345-1360

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

That looks about right, good find, thanks!

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: Bug 1664502 - Disable canonical URL conversion for search shortcuts when using default top sites from remote settings. r=mak

Remote Settings still support search shortcuts for the time being but it's considered an obsolete feature that we don't intend to use.

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/01ba9f66b1a5
Disable canonical URL conversion for search shortcuts when using default top sites from remote settings. r=mikedeboer

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: This is a major issue for moving top sites to default settings in 81, in particular the planned changes to the amazon default tile.

Comment 8

[Noemi Erli[:noemi_erli]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/01ba9f66b1a5

Comment 9

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

We're already in RC week for 81. Please nominate this for release approval ASAP if this needs fixing still before we can ship.

Comment 10

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 9175550 [details]
Bug 1664502 - Disable canonical URL conversion for search shortcuts when using default top sites from remote settings. r=mak

Beta/Release Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: See comment 0
• Is this code covered by automated tests?: No
• Has the fix been verified in Nightly?: No
• Needs manual test from QE?: Yes
• If yes, steps to reproduce: See comment 0
• List of other uplifts needed: None
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): We don't plan on using search shortcuts going forward, so disabling this behavior is very low-risk
• String changes made/needed:

Comment 11

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu] [PTO until Aug 26]]]

Verified the fix on Ubuntu 20.04, Windows 10 x64 with 82.0a1 2020-09-16.

• test involved staging setup with amazon.de/?foo&bar

Comment 12

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Comment on attachment 9175550 [details]
Bug 1664502 - Disable canonical URL conversion for search shortcuts when using default top sites from remote settings. r=mak

Approved for 81.0rc2.

Comment 13

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/rev/989444d75c1b

Comment 14

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu] [PTO until Aug 26]]]

Verified as fixed using 81 RC2 on Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10.