1930861 - Navigate to a website after reaching a SERP from searchmode

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Cristian Baica [:cbaica], Release Desktop QA]

Found in

• Fx 134.0a1

Affected versions

• Fx 134.0a1

Affected platforms

• all

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Firefox (with scotch bonnet enabled).
2. Click the unified search button and choose a different engine than the default one and perform a search.
3. After reaching the SERP, click the address bar.
4. Input a website address like: 9gag.com or www.pinterest.com.

Expected result

• User is taken to the input address.

Actual result

• A search is performed after the written address.

Regression range

• Not a regression.

Additional notes

• This is not a bug, but it is something that should be considered as it breaks muscle memory of how a default address bar works (usually with other browsers as well).
• Even though it is clear for us that searchmode is still active (engine chiclet is displayed), to a new user that is not familiar with what a searchmode is, it would be unclear why a search was done when he clearly wrote down an address to be taken to.
• From an engineering perspective this might be a nightmare to figure out, but I think it would be a good addition to the functionality to have the address bar 'figure out' that it was not provided another search term, but rather a website address to navigate to.

Comment 1

[James Teow [:jteow]]

Hey :cbaica, this is something that was discussed with Josh.

You're right in that it could break muscle memory since users are used to typing in an address bar to go to a website following any search.

On the other hand, selecting a different search engine is different from doing a search with your default search engine. So expecting the search chiclet to persist could be something that is learned.

When we persist search terms, we keep the search chiclet in the address bar on non-default search engine pages so users can refine their search with the same engine, otherwise if we persist the terms without the chiclet and they refine the terms it would reuse the default engine. Having the chiclet available also makes it easier to go back to using the default engine if the need arises.

Navigating to a string that looks like a URL instead of searching it does have benefits and drawbacks. As you mentioned, the benefit is for persisted search, it wouldn't disrupt muscle memory. The drawback is users have had the comfort of using search mode to always search the string for as long as I've known the feature, so navigating to strings that look like URLs could break their flow... though my hunch is this is a minority especially compared to the scenario you described.

I'll talk to Josh and see what he thinks.