2007267 - Alt+up/down should open the unified search button even if the result view is closed

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P1)

Description

[David Smith]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:148.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/148.0

Steps to reproduce:

After typing a partial search entry, attempt to navigate other elements using keyboard shortcuts.

Context: The new search dropdown, and, by extension, how the address bar handles search.

Actual results:

Using tab in the previous search bar allowed changing search engines. The new search bar uses the address bar mechanics, which uses tab to navigate search suggestions. However tab navigates first to the suggestion, and then to the submenu for the suggestion, before moving to the next suggestion.

The submenu contains two elements: The option to delete the entry (which could easily be handled by just using the delete key), and a "Learn More" menu option which takes you to a help page. A "Learn More" on every single search suggestion is not appropriate use of space, or the drag of using two keypresses for every navigation attempt.

Attempting to navigate alternate search engines, I found (on a page other than the "Learn More" redirect) that alt+up/alt+down keys could be used to navigate them, as opposed to using tab as was available in the prior search engine dropdown. Since the available alternate search engines are arranged horizontally, using up/down to navigate them is awkward, and a cognitive mismatch.

Expected results:

The suggestion submenus are not useful. Remove.

Allow delete to be used to remove an existing entry, rather than navigate a submenu.

Move the "Learn More" menu option to a general location for the entire dropdown, rather than a submenu on each suggestion item.

Change alt+up/alt+down to 'alt+left'/alt+right for navigating alternate search engines. Or better, return to allowing the use of tab for that purpose.

Since the new search bar uses the address bar as a base, this should apply consistently to both UI elements.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

Comment 2

[Petruta Horea [:phorea]]

Confirming this enhancement with a few notes:

• Remove from history and Learn more are only available for strings that were searched before (history items) , and not for the suggestions offered by the search engines
• Navigating the search engines can be performed with Up/Down arrow keys

Comment 3

[David Smith]

Clarification on original RFE:

The horizontal layout for alternate search engines was apparently a result of browser.urlbar.scotchBonnet.enableOverride being set to false. I apparently set this config option so many years ago that I forgot that it even existed, and simply assumed that that was the default layout.

Due to that, alt+up/down makes more sense for the default selection of an alternate search engine. It's still a poor choice when the alternate search engines are shown in a horizontal layout. I would still recommend returning tab/shift+tab as navigation keys when alternate search engines are in the horizontal layout, as they had worked before the recent change to the search bar. (regression)

In addition, alt+up/down does not function when the search box is in a partially cancelled state. That is, when the focus is in the search box, and you can move the cursor and write text, but the dropdown list of suggestions is not active, using alt+up/down does not change the current search engine.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to David Smith from comment #3)

Clarification on original RFE:

The horizontal layout for alternate search engines was apparently a result of browser.urlbar.scotchBonnet.enableOverride being set to false. I apparently set this config option so many years ago that I forgot that it even existed, and simply assumed that that was the default layout.

Due to that, alt+up/down makes more sense for the default selection of an alternate search engine. It's still a poor choice when the alternate search engines are shown in a horizontal layout. I would still recommend returning tab/shift+tab as navigation keys when alternate search engines are in the horizontal layout, as they had worked before the recent change to the search bar. (regression)

browser.urlbar.scotchBonnet.enableOverride = false won't be a supported setup going forward.

In addition, alt+up/down does not function when the search box is in a partially cancelled state. That is, when the focus is in the search box, and you can move the cursor and write text, but the dropdown list of suggestions is not active, using alt+up/down does not change the current search engine.

Updating the bug summary to cover that case specifically.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: Bug 2007267 - Alt+up/down should open the unified search button even if the result view is closed. r=daleharvey

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/f397bdf66055
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/7f9e7c5c11a4
Alt+up/down should open the unified search button even if the result view is closed. r=daleharvey

Comment 7

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7f9e7c5c11a4

Comment 8

[Petruta Horea [:phorea]]

Verified that Alt + Up/Down shortcut opens the Unified Search Button from the new search bar with latest Nightly 149.0a1 and Firefox 148 beta 4 (after enabling the search widget) under Win 11, macOS 15 and Ubuntu 24.