1693552 - [Experiment] A separate Amazon/eBay history tile is displayed for search, urlbar and newtab, after one of them is dismissed

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Top Sites, defect)

Description

[Maria Heres, inactive, contact Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: 3 history.gif

[Notes]:

• The issue is visible if eBay or Amazon are some of the most visited websites.
• If they appear on the same position as when following the steps below it will seem as if user choice has been ignored at tile dismiss.

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Beta 86.0 RC (Build ID:20210215141125)
• Firefox Release 85.0.2 (Build ID: 20210208133944)
• Firefox Nightly 87.0a1 (Build ID: 20210218092411)

[Affected Platforms]:

• Windows 10
• Linux Mint 20
• macOS 10.15.7

[Prerequisites]:

• Have the latest Firefox Beta version installed and open.
• Be enrolled in the Treatment branch of one of the TopSites Launch Phase 3 experiments or have the preferences used set. For the US version:
• browser.search.region set to US
• browser.search.experiment set to amazondotcom-adm
• browser.topsites.experiment.ebay-2020-1 set to true
• browser.partnerlink.useAttributionURL set to true
• browser.topsites.useRemoteSetting set to true

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Navigate to “about:newtab”.
2. Click the Amazon Sponsored tile.
3. Click the address bar and click on the Amazon Sponsored option.
4. Perform a search using the Amazon search engine.
5. Open a new tab.
6. Dismiss the Sponsored Amazon tile and other Amazon tiles taking its place.

[Expected result]:

• The Sponsored version of the tile is dismissed.
• A history version of the Amazon tile is added to the Top Sites list.

[Actual result]:

• The Sponsored version of the tile is dismissed.
• Amazon will produce 3 different history tiles. One for the visited Sponsored suggestion in the Awesomebar, one for the visited Sponsored tile and one after performing a search using the Amazon search engine.
• Once one Amazon tile is dismissed, another one takes its place.

[Additional Notes]:

• The tiles will be displayed on the same position if there is no tile with a frecency between theirs.
• The issue is also reproducible for eBay.
• Attached is a recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Maria Heres, inactive, contact Ecosystem QA]

After further investigation:

• Every search through the search engine version will create another history tile.
• This is also reproducible for other Top Sites, including the non-Remote Settings version. We reproduced it with YouTube.

As a result I am removing it from blocking the Sponsored Top Sites fixes.

Comment 2

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

The described behavior here is the expected one. To sum it up in one line, if you have in history example.com/?foo, example.org/?foo and example.com, example.org for all these 4 items, there is only going to be one tile reserved and dismissing the current history instance of the tile would bring up the next entry in history line.

Something with somehow the same core was logged here as well: bug 1663144, more relevant :mkaplys' explanation in 1663144#c1.

Following on the above, we've also discussed with Dao what exactly should happen when you dismiss a direct link(like the amazon %datetime% adm one) and the conclussion was that is should basically follow-up with the tile management and get the next history entry for the tile on dismiss, if any.