Closed Bug 1670253 Opened 4 years ago Closed 3 years ago

Tab-to-search doesn't work as expected by the user on wikipedia (by typing "wiki" for example)

Categories

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P3)

Desktop
All
enhancement
Points:
5

Tracking

()

VERIFIED FIXED
84 Branch
Iteration:
84.2 - Nov 2 - Nov 15
Tracking Status
firefox83 --- wontfix
firefox84 --- verified

People

(Reporter: florencia.diciocco, Assigned: mak)

References

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

Based on the one-off's spec (https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/Q7Y89ZTFSTP#/screens/416055948_Search_Shortcuts) I was expecting the aliases to reflect what the images in there show. However, for example, the Amazon alias is 'amazon.com' instead of 'Amazon', and Wikipedia's alias changes depending on the locale instead of being a fixed alias (Wikipedia).

The Amazon.com case is correct, not a bug. Amazon.com is the name of the Search engine, I discussed this with Pablo yesterday and for now there's no plan to cleanup search engine names for the ui yet. And if we do, we shoudl so the same cleanup in Preferences, but then there may be problems of confusing similar engines.

The wikipedia case won't be supported in 83, because it uses localized subdomains. I submitted some comments to the test plan earlier today explaining that. The problem is that wikipedia always redirects to urls like en.wikipedia.org, it.wikipedia.org and so on, thus typing "wiki" won't autofill them, you should type "en.wiki" or "it.wiki". Because tab-to-search only appears when we autofill the search engine origin, it won't appear.
I must note Chromium has the same bug, for the same reason.
We will be looking at this problem in the future.

Summary: Improve one-off aliases to reflect specs → Tab-to-search doesn't work as expected by the user on wikipedia (by typing "wiki" for example)
Points: --- → 5
Priority: -- → P3
Severity: -- → S3
Depends on: 1669529
No longer blocks: 1647921

Bug 1669529 is investigating a plausible solution for this.

Allow autofill to fill partial search providers domains so that, for example,
en.wikipedia.org can be filled by typing "wiki".

Assignee: nobody → mak
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Pushed by mak77@bonardo.net:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/7dcf44770714
Tab-to-search doesn't work as expected by the user on some engines. r=adw
Iteration: --- → 84.2 - Nov 2 - Nov 15
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 3 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Target Milestone: --- → 84 Branch

Hi,
I tried verifying this on nightly 84.0a1 (2020-11-04) and I noticed that the following case is falling:

  1. Go to about:preferences#search and set Wikipedia as the default search engine.
  2. Open a new tab type w then press Tab

Expected result:
The address bar enters in search mode with Wikipedia

Actual result:
The address bar enters in search mode with google because it takes the 'w' as the first letter of www.google.com.

Could you verify this?

Flags: needinfo?(mak)

The tab to search result appears only when the search engine domain is autofilled, that means for the string you are typing the search engine domain must have the highest score among all the candidates.
In a new profile that is more complicate because no url has built a score yet. The team didn't decide whether we want to ignore the rankings for search engines autofill, so for now they just respect the rules.

Anyway, supposing you are using an en-US build, you should do some searches on Wikipedia, until typing "en" will autofill "en.wikipedia.org".
Then "wi", "wik" or "wiki" should do the right thing.
Whether "w" will also fill wikipedia, depends on its score compared to google, in this case. It's likely it may have a smaller score and thus it won't win the race.

I think we should prefer non-www origins to www origins in autofill when the user types "w", and that is why we have Bug 1610718, that is still not solved unfortunately.

If you have further doubts or question feel free to reach me.

Flags: needinfo?(mak)

It was explained very clearly, thanks Marco. I've verified that this has been fixed on Windows 10 on FF Nightly 84.0a1 (2020-11-04).

Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Regressions: 1676038
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