262206 - Autocomplete popup should disappear when the only match is exactly what the user typed

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Autocomplete, defect)

Description

[Keith Lea]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040914 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040914 Firefox/0.10

Bug 217640 made autocompletion show exact matches in the menu. However, as
Martijn Wargers mentioned in bug 217640 comment 16, it is irritating when the
autocomplete popup hides part of the underlying page and there is only one
result, which is exactly what the user typed.

So, I think the autocomplete popup should disappear if there becomes only one
match left, and it matches exactly what the user has typed in the text field.

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

Comment 1

[Philippe Fremy]

I support that, I find it annoying too.

Comment 2

[Ricardo Almeida]

I also support this bug. It's extremely annoying because Firefox also saves
passwords. And some pages do a username.focus() on the textbox...
What does this means? That if you have a password saved, in some pages the
submit button is bellow the username, you can't submit immediatly because it
appears the autocompletion suggestion.

It's not a major bug but it sure is annoying...

Comment 3

[José Jeria]

*** Bug 301412 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

*** Bug 264222 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

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

Removing uiwanted, since the UI you want is pretty clear ;)

fwiw, I don't think this is the right thing to do, since it could lead someone to think that they'd made a typo. For instance:

Currently:

.-----------------------------------------------------------.
| http://www.foo.com/some/page/somewhere.html              v|
|-----------------------------------------------------------'
| http://www.foo.com/some/page/somewhere.html     foo.com   |
'-----------------------------------------------------------'

 - tells me I've been there before

.-----------------------------------------------------------.
| http://www.foo.com/some/page/somewhere.html;             v|
'-----------------------------------------------------------'

 - tells me I haven't been there before, oh look, a typo!

If we remove the drop-down when there's a single matching entry, then there's no indication of the "yes, you've been here before"ness which is a subtle but important hint that autocomplete gives the user.

Comment 6

[Ricardo Almeida]

(In reply to comment #5)
> If we remove the drop-down when there's a single matching entry, then there's
> no indication of the "yes, you've been here before"ness which is a subtle but
> important hint that autocomplete gives the user.

Sorry, but you're wrong assuming that benefit is better than the annoyances created.

The user is allways seeing the suggestion until the last char is typed... If he made a mistake bad luck :p should have selected the hint while it was there ;)

Comment 7

[Nikitas Liogkas]

(In reply to comment #6)
Hmm, another negative effect of removing the popup on a single match is that the user can no longer delete that single URL (Shift+Del) on the popup. Or, if there were two matches and the user deletes one, the popup will disappear, leaving the user clueless about what happened.

Comment 8

[Ricardo Almeida]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> Hmm, another negative effect of removing the popup on a single match is that
> the user can no longer delete that single URL (Shift+Del) on the popup.

Yes it can... while the text on the input box is different (in this case, the prefix) of that single URL (or other stuff, this bug is for autocomplete in general, not just url autocomplete)

> Or, if
> there were two matches and the user deletes one, the popup will disappear,
> leaving the user clueless about what happened.

That only happen if U1 is the prefix of U2 and user writes full U1 to delete U2...

Comment 9

[Ricardo Almeida]

I suggest people read carefully what is being proposed...

(In reply to comment #0)
> the autocomplete popup should disappear if there becomes only one
> match left, and it matches exactly what the user has typed in the text field.

Comment 10

[David P James]

Mass edit: Changing QA to default QA Contact

Comment 11

[David P James]

Mass edit: Setting correct QA for location bar/autocomplete. My bad. I forgot I had once been Autocomplete QA too. Hmm, why can't I just set the QA of bugs to the default QA of the component in a mass edit rather than having to do it manually...?

Comment 14

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

WONTFIX: this isn't standard behaviour on any platform for autocomplete, comment 5, and comment 7 point out how it would make other interactions with autocomplete strange.

Comment 15

[Adam Nielsen]

I really think this does need to be fixed.  Comment 5 and 7 imply that the user doesn't look at the autocomplete list until they've typed in every single character in the text box, which (for me) is hardly ever the case.  As the name suggests, the autocomplete function is supposed to automatically complete your text based on previous entries - when the list only displays the exact same content as what's in the text field it's not going to help complete anything.  I don't think any other platform/software leaves an exact match visible like this - please point one out if I'm wrong.

As comment 6 mentioned, the user has plenty of time to check the autocomplete field.  It drives me crazy when I have typed something in and the exact same thing appears in the autocomplete list and it won't go away - it wouldn't be a problem if the autocomplete list was less intrusive, but although it has been improved recently it's still annoying to get rid of - e.g. on the Google homepage it obscures the search button so it requires extra clicks to get it out of the way.

As there are a few people who prefer each alternative, can I suggest a user-configurable option so that the user can decide whether or not to leave the autocomplete box visible with a single exact match?  This would keep everyone happy as we could all have our preferred behaviour.

Comment 16

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

(In reply to comment #14)
> WONTFIX: this isn't standard behaviour on any platform for autocomplete,
> comment 5, and comment 7 point out how it would make other interactions with
> autocomplete strange.

What makes you think this isn't standard behavior?
IE does it. Even Google suggestions does it this way.

Comment 17

[Tyler]

I just tried it out on both IE7 and Google Suggestions and they do NOT show exact matches. The comment above is ambiguous. I'm not sure which side they are arguing...

Additionally, the advanced options for auto-complete that allow deletion and checking to see if you've been there before seem irrelevant. Surely, if you needed that access/information you could delete the last char.

Additionally, I consider myself a power user, and did not know about the deleting of the history. It's useful, but it doesn't change my opinion that this bug (yes, bug) should NOT be ignored.

Comment 18

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

Given the matching algorithms in the new location bar, it seems pretty hard to get only one result now.  Are people commonly encountering this?  Also, is this bug limited only to the location bar, or any autocomplete field, like interacting with a Web form?

Comment 19

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Any autocomplete field.