303145 - www omitted if browser.urlbar.autoFill enabled

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Ivan Ičin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050802 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050802 Firefox/1.0+

If browser.urlbar.autoFill is enabled, autofill will omit www (if it exists in
first suggestion) from URL. Selecting the same first item from the drop-down
list delivers normal results (with www if exists in URL).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

Autofill is supposed to complete a URL you type, not add stuff to it, the only
times that the www will be added is if browser.fixup.alternate.prefix is set to
www, or if the site itself is redirecting all traffic to its www address.

Comment 2

[Ivan Ičin]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Autofill is supposed to complete a URL you type, not add stuff to it, the only
> times that the www will be added is if browser.fixup.alternate.prefix is set to
> www, or if the site itself is redirecting all traffic to its www address.

I clearly said that it omits, not that it doesn't add. There is www in typed
url, autocomplete (not autofill) works just fine, but autofill fails.

Comment 3

[Peter Kasting]

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that:

(1) You've previously visited "www.foo.com"
(2) You start to type "foo"
(3) Autocomplete's best match is www.foo.com
(4) autoFill does not fill your address bar to www.foo.com

Is this right?
If so, there is a patch I've posted for Bug 202992 that will make the behavior here somewhat different: start type "foo" in step 2, and autofill won't fill at all, rather than filling to "foo.com".  I don't think we should ever fill to "www.foo.com" in this sort of case, because we shouldn't be adding new text before what the user types (that's what the autocomplete suggestions are for); but at least with that patch, we won't suggest a URL that isn't what you previously visited.

If this doesn't address your issues, let me know.  Otherwise I'll probably resolve this soon (but I'd like to give you a chance to clarify first).

Comment 4

[Peter Kasting]

Resolving WONTFIX.  It seems like a very BAD idea to me to be adding strings in front of what the user is typing, and hopefully Bug 202992 will get fixed in such a way that our behavior here isn't quite so stupid.

Comment 6

[Don Erway]

With inline autocomplete set true, this has ALWAYS put in strings in front of what the user is typing.  This worked in firefox 1.5, all the way back to phoenix 0.xx, and early versions of mozilla and netscape.  Never having had to type "www." or ".com" has always been one of the huge advantages of netscape and derivatives, over IE.

Changing this in firefox 2, and claiming it was a bad idea, for all those who used it for a decades, is just silly.