349994 - User definable shortcuts for search engines

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Camino Graveyard :: Accessibility, enhancement)

Description

[David Munch]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060613 Camino/1.0.2 (MultiLang)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060613 Camino/1.0.2 (MultiLang)

I want to be able to define shortcuts, for which search-engine to be used in the search-field.

For instance, assign command-control-G to google, and command-control-W to wikipedia. Pressing one of them should assign the corrosponding search-engine to the search-field, and after that give the search-field focus. A bit like a mix-up between "Search the internet" and a bookmark keyword.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Håkan Waara]

<hwaara> I guess the best fix would be a search engine editor
<hwaara> and a feature where you could assign them shortcuts, as a followup
<DavidMunch> Exactly what i was thinking

Comment 2

[froodian (Ian Leue)]

I'm really not sure we want this, but if we do it's dep on bug 201723

Comment 3

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Why aren't bookmark keywords good enough?  If you want shortcuts, use the current shortcut methods....

Comment 4

[Håkan Waara]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Why aren't bookmark keywords good enough?  If you want shortcuts, use the
> current shortcut methods....
> 

If you have lots of search engines (he said he had 15 on IRC), what's the current shortcut method for switching quickly to one of them, and doing a search? 

Maybe you'll say bookmark keywords... Personally, I think bookmark keywords are too unintuitive and hard to setup for normal users. Also, it's more like a "command" in the terminal, because you have to remember and know exactly what to type before the search string.

Probably a revamp of bookmark keywords would help this issue. I'd still prefer a context menu with the possible search engines/bookmark keywords. And when you have lots of those, maybe you're gonna want a way to switch quickly between them.

Comment 5

[David Munch]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Why aren't bookmark keywords good enough?  If you want shortcuts, use the
> current shortcut methods....

As Hwaraa points out, it is not that intuitive from a GUI point of view, and most users dont even know they can do it, since you have to access the bookmarks-manager and from there set a shortcut. You can't do it if you add a site you are currently visiting.

But the point is more that I would like it to show up with bug 201723 and be an option.

Comment 6

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

We do need to fix up bookmark keywords to be more how Fx has done it. But that's not this bug.

Adding user definable shortcuts doesn't seem like a solution to any problem to me. You still have to remember what key command you set as a specific search engine. The difference with this bug is that the user would have to remember which modifiers to use as well. With bookmark keywords, it can be as short as one letter to remember (or a simple term like "goog").

I think we're, more or less, covered here. We need to improve our bookmark keyword implementation, but what this bug is calling for isn't an answer to that problem and could, potentially, cause more problems later (say, when we add a new shortcut for the interface that breaks some poor users defined shortcut).

I vote WONTFIX.

Comment 7

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Bug 310773 is the one Sam mentions.