1982604 - The market suggestions flicker when they are redisplayed

Status: ASSIGNED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P2)

Description

[Carmen Fat [:cfat] - Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: suggestion flicker.mp4

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Nightly 143.0a1 (Build ID: 20250811212651)

[Affected Platforms]:

• Windows 11 x64
• Ubuntu 24.04 x64
• macOS 15.3

[Prerequisites]:

• Have a Firefox Nightly 143 installed.
• Be connected to a “US” server using a VPN client.
• Set the following prefs with the next values:
  -> browser.search.region = US
  -> browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.enabled = true
  -> browser.urlbar.suggest.realtimeOptIn = true
  -> browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.dynamicSuggestionTypes = realtime_opt_in
  -> browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.dataCollection.enabled = false
  -> browser.urlbar.merino.timeoutMs = 2000
• Using the RS addon, change the environment to Stage and restart the browser.

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the browser with the profile from prerequisites.
2. Focus the Address Bar.
3. Type a market specific keyword (e.g.: stocks, shares, s and p, netflix stock, etc.).
4. Click the “Show suggestions” button.
5. Type a market specific keyword (e.g. apple stock, tesla stock, visa stock etc).
6. Dismiss the results panel by pressing ESC or clicking outside of it.
7. Click on the address bar in order to display the results panel.
8. Observe the market suggestion.

[Expected result]:

• The market suggestion is correctly displayed, without any visual issue.

[Actual result]:

• The market suggestion flickers when displayed.

[Notes]:

• This issue is reproducible also when:
  -> Navigating to a different tab and back to the initial tab;
  -> Navigating to the Firefox View section and back to the initial tab;
  -> Navigating to the Firefox View section and selecting the initial tab from the “Recent browsing” or “Open tabs” menus.
• Attached is a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

This is due to a combination of a few things, two of which are due to the design of the urlbar, and unfortunately I don't think there's much we can do for the initial release of this feature. They are:

• Merino latency is very high for these suggestions
• The urlbar starts a new query when the view opens
• The view removes stale rows after a small timeout

So what happens here when you reopen the view is:

1. The rows from the previous query are shown
2. The urlbar starts a new query with the same search string
3. The urlbar view starts its stale-rows timer
4. The urlbar sends the request to Merino
5. After a while the stale-rows timer fires and removes the now stale Merino row from the previous query
6. Merino finally replies and the view adds the new Merino suggestion (which is actually the same as the previous one)

This can happen for any high latency suggestion.

We could ask the Merino team to set appropriate cache headers on the response, or maybe even use our own hacky caching feature in MerinoClient. Caching would help a lot.