1712575 - [Phase 1 & Phase 2] There is an inconsistent behavior of displaying Quicksuggest results depending if the search suggestions ahead of history option is enabled or not, while the tab-to-search onboarding is displayed

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P2)

Description

[Carmen Fat [:cfat] - Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: inconsistency.gif

[Notes]:

• This issue is reproducible with several search engines, such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Amazon.

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Nightly 90.0a1 (Build ID: 20210523092307);
• Firefox Beta 89.0b15 (Build ID: 20210520185752);

[Affected Platforms]:

• Windows 10 x64;
• macOS 10.15.7;
• Linux Mint 20 x64;

[Prerequisites]:

• Have the latest Firefox Nightly installed.
• Have the following prefs set:
• browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.enabled to true.
• browser.urlbar.experimental.firefoxSuggestLabels.enabled to true.
• browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.showedOnboardingDialog to true.
• browser.startup.upgradeDialog.version to 89.
• Have the “Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history” option checked.

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the Firefox browser with the profile from prerequisites.
2. Type “wikipedia” in the Awesomebar.
3. Click the Wikipedia Firefox Suggested result.
4. Close the Wikipedia tab and type “wikipedia” in a new tab.
5. Observe the behavior.
6. Uncheck the “Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history” option from the “about:preferences” page.
7. Type “wikipedia” in the Awesomebar.
8. Observe the behavior.

[Expected result]:

• Step 5 - Both the Wikipedia Firefox Suggested result and the tab-to-search onboarding are shown in the Address bar dropdown.
• Step 8 - Both the Wikipedia Firefox Suggested result and the tab-to-search onboarding are shown in the Address bar dropdown.

[Actual result]:

• Step 5 - The Wikipedia Firefox Suggested result is not displayed in the Address bar dropdown; only the tab-to-search onboarding is shown.
• Step 8 - Both the Wikipedia Firefox Suggested result and the tab-to-search onboarding are shown in the Address bar dropdown.

[Additional notes]:

• Attached a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Thank you Carmen. You're right there's an inconsistency, but I would disagree with your expected results -- the Wikipedia Firefox Suggest result should still be displayed in both steps 5 and 8.

This is caused by bug 1709992. Now that the quick suggest result doesn't have a suggested index anymore, it can be truncated when suggested-index results are inserted as the last step in the muxer's sort. We'll need to modify truncation so that the quick suggest result is not removed.

Comment 2

[Carmen Fat [:cfat] - Ecosystem QA]

I was under the impression that if the tab-to-search onboarding is displayed, we shouldn't show any of the QuickSuggest results in the Address bar dropdown. Thank you for the clarification. In this case, I will update the expected outcome from the description to show BOTH the tab-to-search onboarding and also the QuickSuggest result.

Comment 3

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Attachment: Bug 1712575 - Modify the muxer so results aren't truncated and the quick suggest result is preserved.

This gets rid of the two truncations in the muxer. Without the truncations,
there's no danger that the quick suggest result will be removed.

As a nice bonus, getting rid of the first truncation (before suggestedIndex
results are inserted) means that we maintain the flex ratios of all buckets
while still reserving space for the suggestedIndex results. That's an
improvement on the status quo, where we just lop off the last N results to make
room for suggestedIndex results. To get rid of this truncation, we can calculate
the total span of suggestedIndex results and decrease the root bucket's max span
by that amount.

We can get rid of the second truncation (after suggestedIndex results are
inserted) if _fillBuckets and _addResults are modified to be based on result
spans instead of counts. I've made this change in one or two other patches that
we ended up abandoning.

I considered making the truncation logic aware of the quick suggest result
instead of removing truncation entirely. That may have been a simpler patch for
now, but I don't think it would scale as easily to a general solution for
per-bucket suggested indexes (bug 1710518), and it's just not as elegant.

Comment 4

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=6d825e178bab360627cca440c03b8e9741736b2e

Comment 5

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Drew, I see you marked that bug as a P1/S2, is that a driver for a new 89 release candidate or can it ride the 90 train?

Comment 6

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Sorry, this can ride 90. I'll change it to a P2.

Comment 7

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=515ede3fc028efdeee34e3bcc68209d0550a651e

Comment 8

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

This makes a fundamental change to the muxer, so we deliberately landed after the merge and are going to let it ride 91.

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/505bef61cc44
Modify the muxer so results aren't truncated and the quick suggest result is preserved. r=mak

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/568942b6b328
Fix eslint. r=fix CLOSED TREE

Comment 11

[Cristian Brindusan [:cbrindusan]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/505bef61cc44
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/568942b6b328

Comment 12

[Maria Heres, inactive, contact Ecosystem QA]

We have verified that the issue is no longer reproducible. Both the Firefox Suggest result and the tab-to-search onboarding are shown in the address bar. Tested using Firefox Nightly 91.0a1 (Build IDs: 20210603094827 & 20210602214447) on Windows 10, Linux Mint 20 and macOS 10.15.7.