354764 - Automatic search suggestions

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Camino Graveyard :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Håkan Waara]

Firefox 2 has this, Xtorrent has this, and it totally rocks!

We could make it an option (on by default, to show off for new users?) that could be uncheckable in the prefpanes somewhere.

Comment 1

[froodian (Ian Leue)]

I'm not sure what "this" is.  Would it base suggestions on your recent searches, or something like Google suggest?

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

For those of us unfamiliar with the feature, could you describe it a little more?

Comment 3

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: Screenshot from Firefox 2rc2

While you type, you get automatic suggestions, from Google, Yahoo or someone else. It's similar to autocomplete.

Here's a screenshot demoing it from Firefox 2 rc2.

Comment 4

[Stuart Morgan]

If this is sending out your partial search terms as you type them to some remote service somewhere, turning it on by default would not be an option.

Comment 5

[Håkan Waara]

(In reply to comment #4)
> If this is sending out your partial search terms as you type them to some
> remote service somewhere, turning it on by default would not be an option.

Why not? It's on by default in Firefox, and I don't see a problem with it if there's a simple checkbox to turn it off.

Comment 6

[Håkan Waara]

Actually, if we had such a great feature, turning it off by default would be a great waste, imho.

Comment 7

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > If this is sending out your partial search terms as you type them to some
> > remote service somewhere, turning it on by default would not be an option.
> 
> Why not? It's on by default in Firefox, and I don't see a problem with it if
> there's a simple checkbox to turn it off.

Because the Firefox people didn't bother considering the massive privacy implications such a feature would have?

Worth noting that we haven't gotten one single suggestion to include this via the Feedback address. That may change when Fx2 ships, but...yeah.

cl

Comment 8

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

I tend to agree with the privacy implications.

This also has negative IME implications with Google. See bug 338585.

Comment 9

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

(In reply to comment #7)
> > Why not? It's on by default in Firefox, and I don't see a problem with it if
> > there's a simple checkbox to turn it off.
> 
> Because the Firefox people didn't bother considering the massive privacy
> implications such a feature would have?

Care to elaborate on what the "massive privacy implications" are? When you type in the search bar, it's more than likely because you're about to submit the words to the search engine anyways... The feature is also very easy to disable.

> Worth noting that we haven't gotten one single suggestion to include this via
> the Feedback address. That may change when Fx2 ships, but...yeah.

If you rely too much on the "we've gotten no feedback about it" argument to base your decisions on whether to include a new feature, you'll only ever develop features that other people already have...

Comment 10

[Stuart Morgan]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Care to elaborate on what the "massive privacy implications" are? When you type
> in the search bar, it's more than likely because you're about to submit the
> words to the search engine anyways... The feature is also very easy to disable.

For one thing, the search engine field is customizable; just because you are searching there doesn't mean that you are planning on sending that data to Google.

In general, I don't like the idea of sending data anywhere without some explicit user action.  If it's very easy to disable, then it much also be very easy to enable, so where's the harm in leaving it off by default?

Comment 11

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

(In reply to comment #10)
> For one thing, the search engine field is customizable; just because you are
> searching there doesn't mean that you are planning on sending that data to
> Google.

I'm not very familiar with how the Camino search bar works, but the Firefox implementation only sends the text you're typing to the currently selected engine, if it supports the "suggest" functionality. The feature isn't specific to Google, any installable engine can specify a "suggest" URL.

Comment 13

[Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley]]

This bug has been buried in the graveyard and has not been updated in over 5 years. It is probably safe to assume that it will never be fixed, so resolving as WONTFIX.

[Mass-change filter: graveyard-wontfix-2014-09-24]