253331 - Search bar's text should be cleared after a search is performed

Status: ASSIGNED

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P5)

Description

[Jan Geurtsen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040718 Firefox/0.9.1+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040718 Firefox/0.9.1+

When you search via the search bar, the search term should be cleared from the
input field. If users want to repeat the search, they can scroll through the
list and select the previous search term.

I don't know if this is a bug or done on purpose, but please reconsider if so!

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[atzaus]

Yes it woudl make more sense if the search bar cleared by itself because the
user has to select and delete the previous text before making a new search.

Comment 2

[Jan Geurtsen]

addition:

When you use the search bar, the search result is also displayed by the site the
searchbox loads (for example google). So the search can be repeated by selecting
the entry from the drop down list, and refined when displayed on the search
website. 

Leaving the term in the box is just annoying because users have to clear the
result before making another search.

Comment 3

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

confirmed with latest branch builds.  It seems right to clear the topic from the
search field on Enter.

Comment 4

[Raanan Barzel]

A "Clear" button to clear the current search argument AND unselect the
highlighted results should be added.

This bug links to bug #253793, also about terminating the Search function.

Comment 5

[Jan Geurtsen]

(In reply to comment #4)
> A "Clear" button to clear the current search argument AND unselect the
> highlighted results should be added.
> 
> This bug links to bug #253793, also about terminating the Search function.
> 
> 

This bug is about the search bar (next to the location bar), not the search
function :) 

Comment 6

[chris hofmann]

for privacy reasons we need to clear search history...  can some one make a patch?

Comment 7

[chris hofmann]

oops.  guess my comment above should go to a different bug.  filed that one as 
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256201

Comment 8

[Raanan Barzel]

(In reply to comment #4)
> A "Clear" button to clear the current search argument AND unselect the
> highlighted results should be added.
> 
> This bug links to bug #253793, also about terminating the Search function.
> 
> 

I am sorry for the confusion, but the problem is very similar.

Comment 9

[Jan Geurtsen]

Where did the blocking flag go? This should be really, really easy to fix.

Comment 10

[Eric Butler]

It would be awsome to see this before 1.0. Thanks!

Comment 11

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

Eric, once a developer has set a flag to either - or +, it shouldn't be changed
except by a developer. Also, Bugzilla is for technical comments rather than
advocacy.

Resetting blocking-aviary1.0- and blocking-aviary1.0PR-

Comment 12

[Eric Butler]

Oh, sorry about that. I guess I didn't notice it was set to "-" already.

Comment 13

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 260578 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

*** Bug 262612 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

updating summary to be more descriptive.

Comment 16

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

*** Bug 276789 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Search entries should not persist across new tabs or new windows but should
persist within the original tab or window. I don't believe that search text
should simply be cleared. 

Comment 18

[Gary Lawrence Murphy]

Asa, under what use-case model would you need the search string to persist in
the same tab?  When, for example, you use any of the default search engines, the
string used will already be available for edit within the frame of the
searchsite's page, so if you want to make multiple similar/refined queries, you
already have the search string in the edit-box at the search site.

I'm not saying there isn't a use for persistence, I'm only saying that if there
is a use, I believe it is a minority use-case ... and I myself haven't yet
encountered it :)

Comment 19

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Simple use case: Search on foo, pick the fourth result, realize that you're not
getting clear enough results and you need to add more terms to filter on.  If
the search term is there, you click in the search bar, add the new terms and hit
enter.  If we clear, its either retype a bit, autocomplete, add new terms, or go
back to the search results, scroll back up, click in the field, and add more
terms.  Personally, I use this behaviour all of the time in the above scenario,
adding extra steps to edit search results in that scenario needs something very
compelling to justify the hit to usability there.

if you hit ctrl-K or click on the terms, they highlight just like the url bar,
at least on Windows (and other platforms can have this behaviour via the
clickselectsall pref in about:config).  So this isn't a real obstacle to new
searches except maybe on Linux and OS X, and since its now "normal" behaviour,
there simply isn't a strong enough reason to change this.

Comment 20

[Gary Lawrence Murphy]

Interesting use-case.  Typically, I mouse-2 click on search results to open a
new tab if I'm unsure of the result, and even if not, clicking back will restore
the search form page that already includes the search keys within the frame of
the search site.

So in my experience, refining the search keys in the browser fast-search box is
still a minority use-case, but thanks for the tip on clickselectsall pref in
about:config because that's maybe awkward for the majority usecase, but less
awkward than the triple-click I've been using (to use ctrl-K you must be at the
start of the string, so it's really Home,Ctrl-K)

Wouldn't your use-case of previous edit modifications be served by a simple
command-history?  Up-Arrow, edit and hit return; simple and fast, and doesn't
even require the mouse.

Comment 21

[Adam Guthrie]

*** Bug 306002 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 22

[tironsi]

This is seriously annoying. I've yet to reuse the previous search result.
Moreover the case where you add terms would be impractical for the search bar
anyway because: 1) you can't have more than a couple of words in that small bar
anyway, 2) you will already have the page opened and would be more likely to
enter the added terms in the page rather than in the bar.

Comment 23

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 291036, "'Clear Saved Form Data Now' should clear Search Bar's current contents".

Comment 28

[Chris Thomas (CTho) [formerly [e-mail] [e-mail]]]

Attachment: patch

(In reply to comment #19)
> Simple use case: Search on foo, pick the fourth result, realize that you're not
> getting clear enough results and you need to add more terms to filter on.  If
> the search term is there, you click in the search bar, add the new terms and hit
> enter.

Mike, what if it stuck around for a bit before clearing?  I don't mind that it's there for a few seconds (and I can see the use case) - but I always find it jarring to see what I googled hours ago, or amusing to see what other people googled last. My other reason for wanting this is that I'd like to middle-click-paste things into the search box (when I'm using linux); currently I see no way of doing this without extra clicks / keystrokes.  This patch obviously needs work (probably indentation, probably an actual method rather than inline function(), and maybe some configurability, or at least more testing to pick the fade speed and threshold) but it's PoC.

Comment 29

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

A) Reopening since Chris has a super duper wicked awesome patch that addresses this. Chris makes a perfect argument about this.

B) Chris says this is against branch, but it looks like it'll apply just fine to trunk. If they want the old search, it doesn't break search history at all, so the last made search is still there if a user wants it. I don't think users are really likely to say "Hey, I need to edit the last search I made 2 hours ago!" The best way to determine which behavior users prefer is to implement this in a testing cycle and get user feedback. Several of us feel this will be generally well received by users as a whole, moreso than the current behavior.

C) I second the motion for a review, motion passes. Beltzner needs more work anyway.

Comment 30

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Comment on attachment 336147 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

I don't think a timeout is the way to go here, as it's not predictable or understandable (people have a pretty bad mental image of time) and also not really in the user's control. Think of all the times you've had to run to catch a bus or elevator door and just missed it: we don't want that sort of frustration to be due to our UI. :)

Instead, I think what we want to do here is consider the tasks that mconnor rightly points out (refinement of an existing search, ability to re-run a search on a different engine) and balance them against the concerns represented by the request for enhancement (privacy, lack of relevance of something you searched for hours or days ago to your current task at hand). I do think it's worth re-considering, as this bug is old enough that typical browsing behaviour has changed, and it's now reasonable to expect one to have left their browser open for days or even weeks at a time.

When a user refines an existing search or re-runs that search with a different engine, it's usually because the results found the first time weren't satisfactory. So the flow would be:

 - search
 - hmm, no
 - refine

I think it's fairly safe to say that if a user starts navigating after a search, they're on to different things. As such, I recommend that we follow this heuristic:

* After a user searches, the Search Bar shall retain the search terms up until the user performs a navigation task or switches tabs; if a user opens a new tab, the search terms will be retained.

Comment 31

[Justin Kerk]

(In reply to comment #30)
> * After a user searches, the Search Bar shall retain the search terms up until
> the user performs a navigation task or switches tabs; if a user opens a new
> tab, the search terms will be retained.

One potential problem with this - the default for the search box is to replace the current tab, so I would guess that it's not uncommon to enter a search, realize "oh crap I wanted this page", hit the back button, open a new tab, and run the search again (at least, I tend to do this before getting around to changing the pref to open in a new tab). By this heuristic the search would be gone before you could re-run it.

Comment 32

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

With the new search widget in Firefox 3.1 the search bar is irritating me because it has a different behavior as all the other similar looking search textboxes. The search bar doesn't base on the search widget and doesn't offer a clear button. So if users have entered text into the textbox the search button isn't replaced by the clear icon (cross image). Clearing the text needs an extra key press.

As I can see there are different opinions about clearing the content after a search or not. Wouldn't it be good to have a clear icon at least to be able to easily clear the search term?

Comment 33

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: clear the text after two minutes and at least 30 seconds idle time

(In reply to comment #30)
> I think it's fairly safe to say that if a user starts navigating after a
> search, they're on to different things. As such, I recommend that we follow
> this heuristic:
> 
> * After a user searches, the Search Bar shall retain the search terms up until
> the user performs a navigation task or switches tabs; if a user opens a new
> tab, the search terms will be retained.

The fact that the user is interacting with the search results isn't a good indicator that the search term won't be modified anymore, IMHO. And "interacting with the search results" can mean scrolling through the results, but also opening a result in a new tab, switching back to the results page, etc. So if we care about that use case, I don't think that's the right solution.

Comment 34

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Alex, did you miss the ui review?

Comment 35

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Sorry about the lag, I agree with Asa, Mconnor and Beltzner in comment 17, comment 19 and comment 30 respectively.  Also this bug could be invalidated by combining the search and location bar and introducing additional taskfox/ubiquity functionality.

Comment 36

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Comment on attachment 351861 [details] [diff] [review]
clear the text after two minutes and at least 30 seconds idle time

A timer isn't the best way to determine if the user is still actively involved in the search.  They might for instance be reading a series of research papers that each take 15 minutes, but want to leverage the search term.

Comment 37

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

Search used to be combined with the urlbar, but then it got it's own searchbox. The point of this was, "Some of us still use the urlbar for search because we don't want everyone seeing what we searched an hour ago". I think the ideas laid out in #19 and #30 are valid, but I don't think they invalidate the idea behind this bug either. I see both being valid needs.

Comment 40

[Nicolas Bonifas]

I think the search bar should have a different value for each tab: one might want to perform several searches in parallel, or does not want to see the terms from a previous search when browsing something unrelated.
With this solution there would be no need for clearing this field after a delay.

Moreover, now that Firefox has tabs on top, one expects all the content below the tab bar to depend on the current tab. Having a different search bar value for each tab would make the interface more consistent.

Comment 41

[Sergio]

You should consider user privacy as well!
Let's supose a user searched words that reflect something very private and personal and these words should not be seen by others.
The text remains there. 
1- Suppose a curious person pass in front of the computer 1 minute later and the text is still there EVEN if you navigate a different website! Privacy was invaded.
2- Suppose you use PrintScreen to send the screen for other person for professional reasons, or to show something in a website... the words you didn't want to share will be still there, for everyone that receives the image of the screen.
You could think of adding different options of search command:
1- (default) search
2- search and clear field (with possibility of saving as a user preference)
Remember that all searchs you did are in history, so the excuse of refining the text is invalid, because when you start typing firefox will show you all the searches you did using that text.

Comment 44

[snair933]

Please clear my search history bar for which I shall be grateful for ever.  Also any server change can be possible and if so please help me to upgrade my server.

rgds

Comment 47

[Kuba Niewiarowski]

If you srsly gonna change this behavior, at least make it optable.

Comment 48

[nazarenkoAl]

I used an addons for this purpose sinse, probably, FF3. But now, when FF57 no longer supports old addons, I found that this ridiculously obvious bug, which annoys and affect privacy, is open for 14 years!

Comment 49

[Paul Harvey]

I've also used add-ons for this for almost as long as I've been using the search bar itself. In Linux it's a functional issue in regards to pasting, but in my case I just find the text sitting there to be an annoying distraction that I may not want people looking over my shoulder to see.

There should be an about:config setting to optionally clear the search bar immediately upon searching.

Comment 50

[ouzzimmuo]

i've also been depending upon an addon to address this, but of course with FF57 that's no longer supported.

there's request in bug 248955 to treat each tab as having its own search text, which would certainly be a step in the right direction at least, but it doesn't look like that bug is getting anywhere.

my first preference is for the searches to simply clear once entered; if this were made with an option we can toggle, that would be fine with me.

Comment 52

[adrianna.pinska]

Please revisit this issue now that there is no longer an API which allows add-ons to provide this functionality, and the request to restore it has been denied (as per bug 1418024).

Pre-57 this was an essential part of my workflow. I often select terms to copy them and middle-click paste them into the search bar. This allows me to initiate searches using only the mouse with three actions, which is efficient when I am already browsing using only the mouse. In order for this to work the search input field has to be empty. If it is not empty, I have to switch to the keyboard to clear it.

I seldom search for the same term sequentially using multiple engines, and if I need to I can re-click in the field to re-paste it. I don't understand the rationale behind *not* clearing the field as the default behaviour. How many people actually use the tiny search box to manipulate the search terms when repeating the search using the same engine?  I prefer to use the search form on the website which is launched to perform the search, which is much wider and allows me to see the entirety of a long search term at once.

I have tried to switch to a different method of searching, like using the URL bar or an extension which adds a right-click context menu, but these are all unsatisfactory for various reasons.

Apart from the usability issue, I agree that this has privacy implications. I don't like having old search terms hanging around in the foreground indefinitely until I explicitly delete them.

Comment 53

[heikkij]

After disabling search bar plugins this feature should be prioritized again for users to be able to clear search bar after enter. Now it's P4 but should be implemented now as there are no workaround available.

One plugin which implemented this feature was Clear Search 2 which had 881 users according this page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clear-search-2/. There have been also few other plugins with same functinality so I think this would be popular feature for Firefox users.

Comment 54

[Dr. Big Man]

I would also like to highlight the importance of such feature for all the various reasons explained comprehensively above, stressing in particular the excellent discussion (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253331#c41) by Sergio regarding privacy (already six years ago).

I would be grateful, if priority of feature could be increased and released soon - many thanks in advance.

Comment 55

[shao.lo]

Please add an option to clear the search text from the search box after the search is executed.  I use the option to keep the search bar visible, and my eyes are always eventually drawn to a search I did long ago.  I then have to click in the search box to clear it manually.  I then find myself searching for an addon to do this only to find there is no longer an api for it.  It's such a simple request.  Please!!!!

Comment 56

[Petr Kubiznak]

Mozilla, could you please give an update on this feature request? Current state is driving many of your users crazy (including me). Don't allow to loose them.

Comment 57

[Frank Steiner]

I wonder how difficult it can be for a FF developer to add a little x button in the right end of the search box as soon as some text is entered. Then you can leave it there as long as you want for all the people that want repeated search with different engines. And others can just clear the box with one click and paste a new content. Especially for Linux users who are used to mark some phrase with the mouse and paste it into the search box to start a search it would be of great help.

Writing this as a web extension would cost not more than 20 minutes if there was an API for that, so for a FF developer it shouldn't be more work.

This is one of the little things that are not considered important by FF devs obsiously, but pisses of a lot of people. Whatever you do, a button or a config-option for auto-clear, would make all of them at least happy enough, even it they would have preferred the other option.

So can't someone please take half an hour to add this? And before you complain that there are too many things to fix and too few devs: Hey, it was you who decided to take the old API away that allowed us to do all that with add-ons... :(

Comment 58

[klumpy22]

This one little thing manages to annoy me every time I use the search bar. I generally prefer using the search bar over the address bar, but this one issue is the thing stopping me from using it more often than I do.

Comment 59

[Dan M]

Attachment: Bug 253331 - Search bar's text should be cleared after a search is performed (optional via about:config setting), r=standard8

Comment 60

[Dan M]

Hello,

I am a long time firefox user and first-time contributor.

There is a lot of discussion on this bug (including whether or not it is a bug) and a lot of good points have been brought up.

I have submitted a patch for this issue (visible above), which I hope will be reviewed soon.
The patch I submitted by default does absolutely nothing, but adds an about:config setting called browser.search.autoClear which when set to true causes the behaviour to change to what was originally desired by the reporter of this bug some 18 years ago.
For those of us that want the current behaviour, no action would be required.
For those of us (like myself) that would prefer the search auto-clear, we can set this about:config setting to true and it will behave as we expect.

As far as I'm aware there is no standards-track javascript API that would allow an extension to provide this functionality, so I would not expect it to be something an addon could implement in current versions of firefox.

Please let me know if I should change anything :)

Comment 61

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Hi Dan, thank you for offering the patch, I'm sorry for the delay in responding. At this time we've decided not to accept it for a few reasons.

Firstly although it is a hidden pref and doesn't change functionality for most users, we do limit the amount of hidden preferences that we have. They do have maintenance and complexity burdens so we try to keep them to a minimum.

Secondly, we are currently considering what to do with the search bar code - it is based on an old architecture and there are several possibilities as to what we do. As a result, we would prefer not to add more features to it at this stage, but we will review this as part of the plan. Unfortunately I can't say how long it will take to decide at the moment.

Also adding the blocked-ux keyword as we'll want to reconsider this with the user experience team involved.

Comment 62

[Dan M]

Hello,

Thank you for your response.

Regarding the fact that it's a hidden setting, I do understand the desire to limit hidden settings and additional maintenance.
I can probably update the patch to add an option in about:preferences#search so it's not "hidden", if that would make a difference.

As far as the search bar code in general, please update this ticket when a decision is made.
I know it's not the new/preferred user interaction, but a lot of users get value from having a dedicated search bar so I hope that whatever is decided there is a search bar available, and that it has an option to auto-clear after a search is performed.

I will not take any further action for now. If this is still an issue once the search bar code is more stable I will take another look at that time.

Thank you for your time,
Dan

Comment 63

[thedrs]

Hey people,
This issue is very problematic in the current days of using zoom a lot.
People share their screens and their recent search in the search bar is shown to all a major privacy issue.
Firefox puts privacy at the top of its priorities.

We used to be able to download an add-on to clear the search bar for us, but after recent changes to add on API this is not possible any more.

There are issues open on this subject on superuser (see https://superuser.com/questions/319449/is-it-possible-to-automatically-empty-the-firefox-search-bar)

I too think that rejecting patches that were suggested above for the reasons that were given above is wrong:
(a) search bar code is old so we don't want to fix problems with it
(b) we have too many about: options

I vote for increasing the priority and severity of the bug due to the privacy issue and modern day increased usage of screen sharing during zoom sessions.

Comment 65

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S4. However, the bug has 15 duplicates, 24 votes and 56 CCs.
:dan+moz, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 66

[jan.stolarek]

I just wanted to add a +1 for this feature from myself. I use a dedicated search bar and I would very much want to have an option to clear it automatically after performing a search.

Comment 67

[adrianna.pinska]

@jan.stolarek and anyone else who is still frustrated by this and keeps finding this bug: it's still possible (for now) to fix this with userChrome.js, which it's still possible (for now) to enable using the autoconfig feature. This is totally unsupported, and the exact way to do it has changed over the years, so it can be difficult to find accurate instructions. It's one of the features in my personal collection of tweaks here -- if you don't want the other stuff, you can use my code as a starting point and strip out everything except the built-in loader code and the bit that clears the search bar. This works as of time of writing, and since I rely on all these usability tweaks I intend to keep it working on the latest version of Firefox for as long as possible.

Comment 68

[Dan M]

Since I was pingged regarding this bug, I decided to check if my patch still worked when rebased on the most recent code. It does, so I added an automated test case for it and updated the patch.

I don't know what the plans were to rearchitect the searchbar code, but in the last three and a half years it hasn't happened. So I ask that you please consider this patch again. This bug is a daily frustration for me and apparently many other users.

There is no officially supported way to get the behaviour we want.

Comment 69

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The following patch is waiting for review from a reviewer who resigned from the review:

ID	Title	Author	Reviewer Status
D130471	Bug 253331 - Search bar's text should be cleared after a search is performed (optional via about:config setting), r=standard8	dan+moz	Standard8: Resigned from review

:dan+moz, could you please find another reviewer or abandon the patch if it is no longer relevant?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 70

[Dan M]

(In reply to BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte] from comment #69)

The following patch is waiting for review from a reviewer who resigned from the review:

ID	Title	Author	Reviewer Status
D130471	Bug 253331 - Search bar's text should be cleared after a search is performed (optional via about:config setting), r=standard8	dan+moz	Standard8: Resigned from review

:dan+moz, could you please find another reviewer or abandon the patch if it is no longer relevant?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

I checked the recent commits for the files in question and requested review from Moritz Beier. If this should be changed please let me know.

Comment 71

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

We discussed this as a team the other week, and decided that it is still blocked on the search code rework. There's not a firm timescale for this currently, but we are thinking it might happen later in the year.

We think it will also open up more options for when search terms are kept, which may provide a better overall experience.