1804636 - Allow search terms to be refined in content

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Alexandru Putanu [:aputanu]]

In https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/pull/124 we observed that for search engine result pages which use onLocationChange to change the URL when the user interacts with the results, the search term is preserved. This can lead to confusing situations (e.g. because the page does not trigger another load request, the search term is not cleared and the user can navigate to content that is no longer relevant to the search term, while still having it saved when interacting with the toolbar and switching to edit mode).

We should investigate possible approaches to avoid this case, while also preserving the search terms for all search engine result pages which still contain relevant content to the initial search. We could use parseSearchTerms as mentioned in comment.

Comment 1

[Alexandru Putanu [:aputanu]]

Attachment: device-2023-05-17-171708.mp4

This bug was opened as a drawback discussed in this PR.

When using Youtube or Reddit as search engines, because these sites use onLocationChange when navigating, they could lead the user to a page not related to their initial search without the toolbar changing it's content. This is only occurs for Youtube and Reddit, but could also reproduce on other user-added search engines.

Should we prioritize this bug or mark it as a potential blocker for Unified search @Joe?

Comment 2

[Joe M [:jmahon]]

:aputanu I confess I'm not sure I totally understand the nature of the issue that's being described here, but it doesn't seem like it would need to be a blocker for the Unified Search feature, from what I can tell. That said, I'm happy to defer to you, :mavduevskiy, or :verdi if any of you believe this should be a blocker for that.

I do think we should work on resolving it, regardless, though - and it looks like you might have already started taking a look into it (which is great!)

Comment 3

[BMO Github Automation]

Attachment: [mozilla-mobile/firefox-android] Bug 1804636 - Allow search terms to be refined in content (#2435)

Comment 4

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

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.

Comment 5

[BMO Github Automation]

Authored by Alexandru2909
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/commit/11821d557bdbbc6bf39c7b565cd910b971dc230e
[main] Bug 1804636 - Allow search terms to be refined in content

Comment 6

[Roger Yang [:royang]]

For QA verification, perform actions similar to attached video but the result is that the search term in toolbar should be cleared after user action.

Comment 7

[Mira Lobontiu (Android QA)]

Attachment: 1804636.mp4

Verified as fixed on the latest Fenix Nightly 125.0a1 from 2/26 with Google Pixel 6 (Android 14).