265002 - find as you type starts from beginning of page instead of first visible content

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect, P5)

Description

[Daniel Lindkvist]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041018 Firefox/1.0 (gorgias)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041018 Firefox/1.0 (gorgias)

In mozilla 1.7 or firefox 0.9.3 if a page has several links with the same name I
can scroll the page down so that the the link I wish to follow is the first
thing visible on that page. Then I can use fayt to focus that link and enter to
follow it. This no longer works in firefox 0.10 or later, instead of selecting
the first visible link, the page is scrolled up to the first link with that name. 

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1. go to http://forums.mozillazine.org/
2. scroll down so that the first thing you see on the page is "Firefox General"
3. hit 'f or just f to select that link and then hit enter to follow it
4. hit alt+leftarrow to go back
5. repeat step 2-3
Actual Results:  
The page is scrolled to the top and "MozillaZine Forum Index" that is the first
link on that page containing 'f' gets selected.

Expected Results:  
Select "Firefox General" again because that is the first visible link containing 'f'

I can not reproduce this 100%. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. Clicking in
the page seems to change the starting point for the search. Using ctrl+f instead
of find as you type can make it work as expected sometimes.

Comment 1

[Mark Ma]

I see this too.  But, I have to note that I have installed the All-in-one
Gestures and that seems to have somehow modified the
Advanced/Browsing/AutoScrolling setting.  It is greyed out and I don't know if
that somehow impacts the find-as-you-type feature.

But I really loved this feature in the .9 series.  Am very sad to see it not
working in 1.0 and hope it is quickly found and fixed.

Comment 2

[Daniel Lindkvist]

Attachment: patch

Seems to be the only change needed to make this work as before...

Comment 3

[Ben Basson]

This works for me; Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4)
Gecko/20050719 Firefox/1.0+

If you're still able to reproduce this with a more recent build, please let me know.

Comment 4

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

I can reproduce the bug with: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050805 Firefox/1.0+

That (isFirstVisiblePreferred) change came from bug 185824. If you select some
text first, it works as expected. I'm not sure if that change was intended.

Comment 5

[Mark]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6
Windows XP, SP2

I was able to reproduce this as such:
1. Open http://forums.mozillazine.org/
2. Click the mouse over "Looking for help?" near the top of the page
3. Scroll down so that "Firefox General" is the first thing you see
4. FastFind "f" (just this should be sufficient)

It should scroll up and highlight the "Browse from the top" link, not the "Firefox General" link. By clicking somewhere to shift focus and scrolling away is the only way I could get it to pick a non-visible link over a visible one, which may or may not be intended. If I scrolled without clicking on a clean page, it worked as expected.

Comment 6

[Aaron Racine]

Reproduced with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/2007051502 Firefox/2.0.0.4.

However, this works for me with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a6pre) Gecko/2007060204 Minefield/3.0a6pre.

Reporter, or anyone else that was able to reproduce this, can you confirm whether this works for you as expected using trunk?

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

Comment 7

[Aaron Racine]

After further testing, please ignore my last comment.  The issue seems a little more complex.

STR:

1. Restart Firefox
2. Open http://forums.mozillazine.org/
3. Scroll down so that the first thing you see on the page is "Firefox General"
4. Hit 'f and note that the "Firefox General" link is selected
5. Open a new tab (I used Control-T)
6. Repeat steps 2-4 and note the link that is selected
7. Open a new window (I used Control-N)
8. Repeat steps 2-4 and note that the "Firefox General" link is selected

With Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9, the results after completing steps 4, 6 and 8 are the same: The "Firefox General" link is selected.

With 2.0.0.4 and trunk (see UAs in comment #6), the results after steps 4 and 8 are the same as with 0.9.  However, after completing step 6, the "browse from the top" link is selected, even though it was not on the screen when 'f was pressed.

Can someone else reproduce my results?

Comment 8

[Daniel Lindkvist]

I still have this problem, no change. However some extension seems to make it less annoying. First I thought it was fixed but then I started with -safe-mode and there it was :(

Comment 9

[Aaron Racine]

Daniel,

In safe mode, if you open a new window (Control-N) and try reproducing the results only one time, does it work like you expect?  If not, what version of Firefox are you using?

Comment 10

[Daniel Lindkvist]

In the new window (ctrl+n) it works as expected if I type in the address forums.mozillazine.org in the location bar. But when I use "find as you type" from my personal homepage to first focus the link to forums.mozillazine.org then press enter to go there the search always start from the top of the page. I guess it has something to do with what element in the browser that has focus?
I'm using:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a5) Gecko/20070606 GranParadiso/3.0a5

Comment 11

[Aaron Racine]

I think it has to do with how many times you've tried "find as you type" (FAYT) in a window.  It looks like it will only work once per window the way you expect.  So, if you use it on your personal home page, it won't work anywhere in that window again.  Try this:

On your personal home page, use FAYT to locate the forums link.  Right-click on that link and choose the "Open Link in New Window" option.  In that new window (now showing the forums), I think FAYT should work one time like you expect, even though you found the link from your personal home page using FAYT.  Does it work one time in the forums when you do this?

Comment 12

[Daniel Lindkvist]

Yes it always works the first time in a new window. It works in a new tab to but only if I haven't used fayt before so I think you're right about that it only works once in a window.
One thing that I noticed is that you can "reset" it if you:
*type f - fast find bar appears
*hit backspace to clear the text - now the selection is cleared in the page as well
*hit escape - find bar closes
*try again - now it works

I think this and reading https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185824 (Comment 19) points to an issue with focusing. When fayt finds some text the frame gets focused (even in a page whith only one frame) and then when you delete the text the frame loses focus and fayt again starts from first visible content.

Comment 13

[Aaron Racine]

I'm not sure it's a focus issue, but regardless, it's inconsistent behavior and a regression.

Confirming and cc'ing some people that can weigh in re: what they feel is the appropriate behavior for FAYT: 1) searching the whole page, or 2) searching just the part of the page that's visible in the browser window.

Comment 14

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Aaron, could you answer the question in comment 4? (or bug 185824, comment 27 for that matter)

Comment 15

[Aaron Leventhal]

Blake Ross did the work to move find as you type over to Firefox and made some changes. I have no idea why they changed "is first visible preferred", and haven't looked at the code or checkin which did that.

I believe "is first visible preferred" is probably still turned on in Seamonkey.

In response to comment 4, here is the nuance: when there is a visible caret or selection we start from there, because it's obvious to the user where the position is. When the is no currently apparent position (e.g. the user has scrolled somewhere or is still at the top), that is when we start at the first visible content (or at the top, if that pref is off).

Comment 16

[islisis]

9 year old bug, but would really love to see at least an option to provide the desired behaviour in report

Comment 17

[Emil Pasca [:emilpasca]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0

I have tested this issue on the latest Firefox release (46.0.1, Build ID: 20160502172042) and the latest Nightly (49.0a1, Build ID: 20160516030211) and I was able to reproduce this as such:
1. Opened http://forums.mozillazine.org/
2. Scrolled down so that "Firefox General" was the first thing I've seen at the top of the page
3. Pressed "ctrl+f" (Find command) and typed "f"
4. Observed that the first highlighted letter from the page was not the one from the current top which should have been the one from "Firefox General" instead it was the one from the "for Mozilla Thunderbird" which is somewhere near the middle of the page.