230741 - Unable to search the contents of pages in the history

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 126621

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Kevin Ar18]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031216 Firebird/0.7+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031216 Firebird/0.7+

The History search features does not search the contents of the pages in the
history.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open up the History
2. Peform a Search

Actual Results:  
The search searches the page titles and returns results based on that.

Expected Results:  
The search results should search the contents of the pages, and return results
based on that.

Do I classify this as major or as enhancement?
The current search is basically useless (as I hope to show) and is in severe
need of replacment.  However, this is also an enhancment request.
Feel free to change to enhancement if that would be better.


Problem with current method:
To understand the problem, I would like to bring out one point about people
typically browse the internet.

[ Our focus ]
When an individual visits a site, most of the time, their focus is on the
contents of the page.  They may read a few lines, or the entire page, before
moving on.  However, during this process, the individual rarely (if ever)
focuses on the title of the page.  There's really no need to read the title,
since it's the content that one is interested in.

[ Why the current seach is of no use ]
Now let's assume that an individual remembers something they were reading on a
site, but forgot where they saw it at.  The history feature provides just the
means to help them find what they lost.  However, looking through every URL in
the history is a process that no one wants to go through.  The search feature
provides the perfect solution.  However, the problem arises in the fact that
Firebird (and Mozilla) search the title; which, as I have described, is a part
of the site that nobody notices most of the time (if ever).  Thus, the user is
left in a sitation where the history is basically useless to them as a retreival
tool.  The search feature is there, but it does not search what people normally
remember.


On the other hand, IE's search feature searches the actual contents of the pages
in the history.  This is the most effective means of searching the history
because it is based on how individuals use their browser.  (There may be
potentially better methods, but those are much, much more complicated.)  As I
mentioned earlier, when a person browses the internet, they focus on the page
contents.  As such, the individual is often able to recall a few keywords from
the page.  As such, the ability to search the page contents provides one of the
best and most effective means for searching the history, while searching the
title is fairly useless in many instances where something needs to be found.


Other reasons:
1) I doubt that this is as important as the other reasons.  However, IE's method
of searching the history involves searching the contents of the pages.  For the
people that have gotten used to this feature, they will find it missing in
Firebird.  If we are to at least achieve the same level of features as IE (and
surpass it as well), then we need to upgrade the search feature to search the
page contents as well.

Other notes:
This idea was basically copied from IE.
The only downside I can see is if someone has a need to actually search the
titles; however, the need to search page contents more accurately represents how
people use their browser.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 126621 ***