274432 - When dragging text to search bar, mouse over search engine should show list of search engines, and allow dropping text onto one to search that engine

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Ian Macfarlane]

When selecting some text and dragging it to the search bar, hovering the mouse
over the search engine icon should display the drop down list of search engines,
and releasing the mouse over that search engine should instead search for that
selected text in that engine.

I don't think this would confuse most users just searching, as they usually
don't drag text there when searching so they wouldn't notice this, but for
advanced users this would be very, very cool. It might be an idea to perhaps
have a small (0.5/1 second or so) delay before opening this up.

We'd obviously want to hide the "Add Engines" from the list when dragging text
like this to the search box, and perhaps other small visual things could be done
(for example change the text for "Google" to "search Google" or even "search
Google for <start of text ending with... after X characters>". Or perhaps have a
heading at the top of the search engines list that says something like "search
these engines for <dragged text...>" - just to keep it all tidy.

Comment 1

[Elmar Ludwig]

*** Bug 296360 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
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Comment 3

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

This makes it far to complicated for non-geek users

->WONT

Comment 4

[Ian Macfarlane]

It doesn't make it complicated at all for non-geek users. As I stated, due to
the delay before being shown, it won't get shown at all unless the user hovers
over the icon for long enough.

Comment 5

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

This is a quite reasonable request.

Comment 6

[Fernando García Gómez, stripTM]

(In reply to comment #3)
> This makes it far to complicated for non-geek users
> 

I don't think it will be complicated for non-geek users, as it usually will go unnoticed for them, as well as the dragging link to the bookmarks menu, the tabs or the url bar...

Nevertheless for power-users, it will enhance the experience avoiding to go twice to the same place (selecting the search engine and dragging the text to search).

Comment 7

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

I think it would be a nice enhancement to the works being done on the search bar for FF2.0

Comment 8

[Rubén Martín [:Nukeador] ❌ [away till Aug 31st]]

I also agree with this feature, its very useful.

Comment 9

[YUKI "Piro" Hiroshi]

I implemented this feature as an extension. It possibly helps you to imagine the behavior of future Firefox including a fix of this bug.

http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_secondsearch.html.en (Ver.0.3.2007050202 or later)

Comment 10

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

(In reply to comment #9)
> I implemented this feature as an extension. It possibly helps you to imagine
> the behavior of future Firefox including a fix of this bug.
> 
> http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_secondsearch.html.en (Ver.0.3.2007050202 or
> later)

I tried this on the Mac a little while ago and wasn't able to make it work. Is it Windows or Linux-only?

Comment 11

[YUKI "Piro" Hiroshi]

In Mac, the popup can be shown just after you drop the text to the bar.
Its implementation is based on codes from the "Bookmarks" menu.
(It popups the menu if you drag-over onto the menu, in Windows or Linux.
It also doesn't work in Mac.)

Comment 12

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

Not working on this at the moment. Hiroshi, maybe you would be interested in creating a patch?

Comment 13

[Harald Gutsche]

This worked for many years now, but now it's broken (at least on linux, but I think also on windows).

Sorry I don't know how I should handle to change the status to BUG

Comment 14

[YUKI "Piro" Hiroshi]

The one-off search provides a popup panel to list available search engines. It seems very similar to a part of this bug. Now, I hink that we only have to write some codes to handle drag and drop on the search bar. Is it the time?

Comment 15

[YUKI "Piro" Hiroshi]

And I've confirmed that the one-off search popup appears after I drop a text. But I still need dragover!

Comment 23

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Restricting comments on this older bug, as this appears to attracting spam.