226750 - remove history search function from trunk

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: History: Global, defect)

Description

[Andrew Hagen]

Unfortunately, the history search function is broken. It is doing more harm than
good and must be removed from the trunk. Currently, users believe that their
searches of history give them all relevant items, but that is not the case.
History search is currently *case sensitive* and thus you must in type in the
title or URL exactly as it appears in history. Bug 131470.

Because this bug fails _silently_, users are left with the impression that they
don't have that item in their history, when they do. This is more than
useless-UI, this is a feature that is totally broken.

I invite you to perform a few tests.

Open History. Ctrl+H works. Second, search history. Ctrl+F works. 

First, searching the title, look for "bug". You will note find the web page that
holds this bug, even though you are currently viewing this page! 

Second, searching the title, look for "Bug". You will now see this page in
search results.

Third, searching the location, look for "BUGZILLA". Note that nothing is found.

Fourth, searching the location, look for "bugzilla". You will find at least this
web page, if not others.

This is a major problem, a silent killer. It renders history utterly unreliable
and thus useless.

Consequently, history search must be removed from the trunk.

Comment 1

[Hermann Schwab]

Hey Andrew, what did you smoke?
We need bugs, so bugzilla doesn´t get useless. Removing the whole trunk would
get rid of all bugs, doesn´t this sound logical? But I don´t want to lose bugzilla.

Could you please tell when you started observing the case-sensivity?

Comment 2

[Andrew Hagen]

It's been going on for more than a year. Enough is enough.

This bug is only to remove the functionality of searching history. Nothing else
is touched.

Comment 3

[Jay Davis]

The Firebird developers fixed this for their own browser.  Like usual, very
little that is fixed or enhanced makes it over to Mozilla, probably because they
don't want Mozilla improved anymore.  Can't some generous soul who worked on
Firebird history look into this?

Comment 4

[Jay Davis]

The bug which Andrew Hagen speaks of is no minor bug, nor is it an enhancement.
 It had to be a complete oversight when History was originally conceived of
because no sane programmer would argue for case sensitivity in any search unless
it was the option to do a case sensitive search on letters or a novel being
written in a Word Processor.  An option!  Usually it would not be the first
choice there, either.  Capitalization among web site names and url's is highly
arbitrary and random in nature.  Often capital letters are not in the beginning
of the string or word, only.  They can be interspersed.  There are words like
"eBay".
  The current History will only cause users problems unless they come eventually
to realize what is occuring.  The presence of this bug in Mozilla makes it
unworthy of being considered a finished product that version numbers such as
1.4, 1.5 or 1.6 strongly imply.  No corporation would be satisfied with this
type of oversight.  There are ridiculous performance issues that are
self-evident in Mozilla (such as reloading half the pages that you go Back or
Forward to instead of pulling them from cache), and a couple of laughably
missing features (like Netscape 4's bookmark locating feature).  They are of the
same level of concern to equally large segments of Mozilla users, but this is a
silent bug in a core browsing feature.

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Not a blocker. if someone wants to make this happen for SeaMonkey, you've got my
blessing but there's no way we're going to hold the release of 1.6 because
firebire improved on a seamonkey feature.

Comment 6

[Jay Davis]

Asa,

Your response completely misses the point, carelessly.  Your reasons for not
blocking should primarily address comment #4 and of course, Andrew Hagen's
explanation of the issue.  I pulled up a list of blockers, every last blocker,
and mostly they are meaningless or out-of-date or simply never fixed.  Most of
them truly should not be blocking Mozilla.  This is *now* though, and this is an
important bug.  I think many people writing code for Seamonkey or Firebird don't
understand that they are going to have to think as a Group more now or this
project will grind to a halt--it's a big red dinosaur, it might as well stand
for Communism right now, at least for a while in it's developmental history. 
Some bugs and enhancements really do have to be given urgent priority while the
rest of the stuff that affects only a few users some of the time need to be put
on the back burner.

Comment 7

[Stefan Borggraefe]

Bug 131470 will be fixed soon. So there is no need to remove the search
functionality. Marking WONTFIX.