283711 - Shortcut to search bar should iterate through search plugins

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[tom mutdosch]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When I hit the shortcut for the search bar (ctrl-K) the cursor then moves to the
search bar.  To move up and down through the list of available search plugins I
then have to hit ctrl-UP or ctrl-DOWN.  It would be much more efficient and
convenient if I could just keep hitting ctrl-K to cycle through all the
available search plugins.  

For example, I hit the shortcut once and the cursor moves to the search bar
(google search).  I hit the ctrl-K again and it moves to the next search (imdb),
etc.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[djpohly]

This should probably be in Firefox / Keyboard Navigation.

Comment 2

[Jamie Diamond]

I like the idea, but we should make sure that if the bar is deselected even for
a moment, that a ctr-k would just put in it back in the bar instead of cycling
through anyway. Engines should only cycle by shortcut if the cursur is already
in the field.

Good idea though.

Comment 3

[djpohly]

I'm guessing that what this needs is some more code in browser.js function
focusSearchBar [1], which is called every time c-k (c-e, c-j, etc.) is pressed,
asking: "Is document.commandDispatcher.focusedElement the searchbar?  If so,
rotate engines."

I'm not familiar enough with the code to know if we'd need to expose any of the
code that's currently in keypress handlers [2].

[1] http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/browser/base/content/browser.js#2559
[2] http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/browser/base/content/search.xml#358

Comment 4

[Aaron Leventhal]

I kind of like it, but I'm not sure if this is really a good idea.

Here's my reasoning:
People use their muscle memory without thinking much when they use the keyboard. They may go away from the computer come back, decide to do a search, and hit Ctrl+K. If they already happened to be in the search it would cycle, thus confusing some newbies.

So for the tiny improvement it makes for you, a power user, it's not worth it. There are a lot more unsophisticated users who will eventually change from their search engine accidentally and possibly not even notice at first, which would really confuse them.

So on balance it improves it slightly for some, and causes a risk of confusion for others. The improvement it creates is not big enough to warrant the risk, I don't believe.

Comment 5

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Mass un-assigning bugs assigned to Aaron.

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Similar to comment 4, I think this is unlikely to be implemented, so marking as wontfix.