254457 - Highlighting text, then selecting "Search Web for" from the context menu doesn't work at all.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 227946

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Description

[Glen Smith]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

Highlighting text, then selecting "Search Web for" from the context menu doesn't
work at all. Nothing happens, not even an error message.

I've tried with a clean install and a new profile, to no avail.

This has been a problem for me throughout the 0.9.x series, but I was waiting
for a few point releases before I filed a report. It worked fine in the 0.8
releases.

I'm currently using the official 0.9.3 release on Slackware 10. I've tried it in
a number of window managers, just to make sure that's not an issue.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Highlight text on web page.
2. Right click.
3. Select "Search Web for"
Actual Results:  
Jack Diddly.

Expected Results:  
Opened the search results in a new tab.

Tried with both default theme and other themes.

Also tried on my wifes laptop which is also running Slack 10. Same results.
Nothing happens at all when I select "Search Web for".

Comment 1

[Logan Ingalls]

WFM Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.1+

What's your "browser.search.defaulturl" set to?  Have you tried with a fresh
profile?  What extensions do you have installed?

Comment 2

[Glen Smith]

Thanks for your response.

OK - browser.search.defaulturl is set to
"chrome://browser-region/locale/region.properties", which it lists as being the
default. (For the record, I just tried changing this to http://www.google.com,
but it made no difference, so I changed it back.)

I've tried it with a fresh profile. I've tried wiping everything mozilla/firefox
related and freshly installling everything. No joy.

The only extension installed is the DOM inspector, which was part of the default
install.

Interestingly though, highlighting text and then middle-clicking in the firefox
window successfully performs the "I'm feeling lucky" google search (searches
google and then takes me automatically to the first result), so it *is* able to
perform searches. Just not from the context menu.

I've been googling for this problem for a while now, and I've not heard of
anyone else experiencing it. It's bizarre :)

Comment 3

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

My Linux Aviary build has that pref set to
http://www.google.com/search?lr=&sourceid=firefox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=

Which it also lists as default! Was the default munged on the 0.9.x branch to
point to the locale file Glen listed? Does anyone else see that value?

Comment 4

[Ricardo Silva]

Well, I've been trying to fix this same problem here without luck ...
As you say, middle-click works but not the "Search Web for..." from the context
menu!

But if I delete the profile and reinstall the browser it works sometimes... but
only sometimes ...

Sometimes it works, but suddenly it stops working for no aparent reason and I've
got to reinstall all over!

My current setup is Suse 9.1 Professional and I've also come across this exact
problem in Mandrake 10.1 (Cooker)

Comment 5

[Ricardo Silva]

Well, I've just found an extension that works around this problem by using the
searchbox plugins instead of just the Google Search...

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=75294


After installing this the bug is gone (sort of)

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

This seems to be a common bug that isn't really addressed anywhere. The other
bugs are all wontfixed or invalid because it doesn't happen in new profiles, but
obviously something makes those profiles go bad in the first place.

See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=39596 and bug 227946 for
background info, and bug 232179 comment 2 for a possible fix. Apparently caused
by a messed up profile, or maybe a profile made by a messed up build.

Either way, you can try changing the pref to
http://www.google.com/search?lr=&sourceid=firefox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q= to fix it
manually.

I reopened bug 227946.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 227946 ***

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 227946 ***

Comment 7

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Verifying old and obvious dupes. Sorry for bugspam.