1706065 - The currently active search engine is not visible before starting a search.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 1102922

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[thijs.meijerink]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:87.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/87.0

Steps to reproduce:

• Select the search bar using ctrl-K
• Type or paste some text
• Press enter

Actual results:

The currently active search engine is not shown next to the search bar, where it used to be in place of the magnifying glass icon. Therefore it often happens when doing a quick search that the wrong search engine is used, because I was not aware it was selected and it is not the one I have selected most often.

Expected results:

It would be nice to get back the icon that shows which search engine is selected, so that I know whether it is the one I want to use. If it is, I can do a quick sequence of ctrl-K, ctrl-V, Enter without thinking much about it. Now, I either have to spend more time to find out which search engine is selected by using e.g. ctrl-up arrow or ctrl-down arrow (this is slow and a hassle), type first and wait for the search engine to become visible (this takes about a second when just pasting, and interrupts my flow), or simply live with the fact that the incorrect search engine is sometimes used.

This discourse topic from 2018 describes the same issue:
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/add-search-engine-icon-to-search-box/34543

Comment 1

[thijs.meijerink]

Btw, the text "Search" in the empty search bar could be replaced with the text corresponding to the selected search engine as well. This would allow me to differentiate between, for example, "Wikipedia (en)" and "Wikipedia (nl)", which have the same icon.

Comment 2

[Axel]

Hope this helps ... Me and others reported this issue years ago: #1190206, #1102922

Comment 3

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Address Bar' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 4

[Harry Twyford]

Are you referring to the separate search bar? Because if the search bar is not in the toolbar, pressing Cmd+K should show the active search engine in the Urlbar before you search.

Comment 5

[Axel]

Attachment: No icon or id in search box.gif

I guess, OP refers to this:

Comment 6

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Based on the Discourse link, they're talking about the search bar. Axel is right that there are already bugs for this, and unfortunately I don't think the status has changed since they were filed and closed, so I will dupe this to bug 1102922. Someone linked to an add-on in that bug that may be helpful.

Comment 7

[thijs.meijerink]

(In reply to Drew Willcoxon :adw from comment #6)

Based on the Discourse link, they're talking about the search bar. Axel is right that there are already bugs for this, and unfortunately I don't think the status has changed since they were filed and closed, so I will dupe this to bug 1102922. Someone linked to an add-on in that bug that may be helpful.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1102922 ***

I guess the status of a 7 year old design decision is unlikely to change if nobody asks about it. Since Gavin Sharp says in that bug along with marking "wontfix": "this is a potential issue that we should try to monitor and potentially address in a followup", would it be possible to reopen the discussion on the design of the search bar somehow? Bugzilla-etiquette-wise, should we use that old bug for that, or can it be a new one such as this one her?

Thank you for bringing up the possibility of an addon. I don't think the linked addon would work anymore. But a possible compromise here might be to try and get the search bar icon and default text added to Firefox's WebExtensions API, so that this functionality can again be implemented as an addon. That would be a new bug/feature request I suppose. Any thoughts on this?

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to thijs.meijerink from comment #7)

I guess the status of a 7 year old design decision is unlikely to change if nobody asks about it. Since Gavin Sharp says in that bug along with marking "wontfix": "this is a potential issue that we should try to monitor and potentially address in a followup", would it be possible to reopen the discussion on the design of the search bar somehow? Bugzilla-etiquette-wise, should we use that old bug for that, or can it be a new one such as this one her?

I think the question from me would be why is this important? Most people don't frequently change their default search engine, and as soon as you type something the pop-up that comes up says where you're searching, worst case you accidentally go to the wrong site, and change it and do the search again.

Thank you for bringing up the possibility of an addon. I don't think the linked addon would work anymore. But a possible compromise here might be to try and get the search bar icon and default text added to Firefox's WebExtensions API, so that this functionality can again be implemented as an addon. That would be a new bug/feature request I suppose. Any thoughts on this?

I doubt this is something WebExtensions would support, we don't tend to allow that level of granularity with WebExtensions (the add-ons referenced there would have been the older style of add-ons that were able to do more).

Comment 9

[Axel]

Most people don't frequently change their default search engine

Most people are just private users, using FF with no professional background. Most people cannot even touch-type. Most people don't give a damn about software and just accept what they get served. I don't believe it's wise to decide on quantity alone, but rather to decide on quality.

worst case you accidentally go to the wrong site, and change it and do the search again.

Yes, this happens to me about thirty times a day!

I guess you can vividly imagine that, after such day, if I'd met the one who took the decision to remove the icon and search engine name from that control, then I'd love to give him a wedgie and ask him if he still believes this to be a wise decision he made. (Actually, that's become an obsessed almost daily day dream of mine.)

why is this important?

This is important due to usability reasons.

If usability weren't important, then I'd suggest to drop the address bar along with all the toolbar icons and replace it with a simple REPL console. Most users wouldn't tell the difference, I guess.

Comment 10

[Yedyge]

Most people don't frequently change their default search engine, and as soon as you type something the pop-up that comes up says where you're searching, worst case you accidentally go to the wrong site, and change it and do the search again

What an argument is that?!

"Most people don't frequently use Firefox, and as soon as you launch any browser, the GUI says what browser is it, worst case you accidentally launch the wrong browser, and re-launch a desired one, and go surfing again!"

I ultimately do not agree with such an argumentation.

Low (?! citation needed!) usage of an already implemented feature is not the reason to destroy this feature.
I would be appreciated, if Fx developers return engine icon back and cease destroying what they did not built.

Comment 11

[thijs.meijerink]

(In reply to Mark Banner (:standard8) from comment #8)

(In reply to thijs.meijerink from comment #7)
I think the question from me would be why is this important? Most people don't frequently change their default search engine

Personally I use multiple search engines all the time, and it seems like FF aims to support this in other ways. FF ships with multiple search engines and I doubt this is because some people want to use Twitter for all their web searches. It is easy to change the default search engine with shortcut keys, instead of only somewhere in the settings. Extensions that add more search engines or allow the user to specify custom search engines are quite popular (or used to be popular before they became incompatible). And of course one-click search was also introduced a while ago. All of which is to say: I think there are quite some users who switch between search engines all the time.

and as soon as you type something the pop-up that comes up says where you're searching

I think it makes for a better user experience when you have the required information before starting a small task, and then execute it in one go, instead of having to interrupt your task halfway (while typing or after pasting in the search bar) to decide what the next action should be.

Also consider the suggestions given by the search provider while typing: if I want to search Wikipedia and use suggestions from Wikipedia, I want to select Wikipedia before even starting typing, because the suggestions are meant to be used while typing. Otherwise, I have to type the first few letters of my query, notice the search provider should be changed, and then type the rest of my query. This is not good UX.

worst case you accidentally go to the wrong site, and change it and do the search again.

Not that bad if it happens once every year, quite irritating if it happens multiple times a day.

Comment 12

[thijs.meijerink]

Apologies about the status change, that was not intended.

Comment 13

[Axel]

@thijs.meijerink:

instead of having to interrupt your task halfway (while typing or after pasting in the search bar)

I'd like to add another use case to it: When you're typing so fast that the result appears before the search engine list has a chance to be observed.

Comment 14

[thijs.meijerink]

Coincidentally I just came across another case where it would be nice to see the active search engine at a glance: when dragging a piece of selected text to an empty space on the tab bar (and it is not a URL) it is searched with the active search engine. If one first has to hover over the search bar to see what search engine is active (or correct a mistaken search afterwards), that seems to defeat the point of having a feature that lets you search quickly with a single mouse drag.