360001 - browser.fixup.alternate.prefix broken when keyword.enabled is set to 'false' (using ctrl-enter in the location bar for fixup)

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P5)

Description

[Keith S.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

The canonizeURL function in browser.js controls the behavior of what happens on the location bar if the user types ctrl-enter or shift-enter, etc., after entering a partial web address.

It's a little confusing, and maybe technically not a bug, because the code is trying to give double meaning to the browser.fixup.alternate.suffix preference. According to the end user documentation, this is used for domain guessing (separate but similar functionality), and uses both a prefix and a suffix. However, this particular variation of that functionality only uses the suffix, and not the prefix. For the prefix, it hardcodes "www.", so while you can override the suffix used with ctrl-enter by setting the .suffix preference, you can't override the prefix.

I would think if you're going to use one preference, you should use them both. For that reason, I think this is a bug. (If it used neither, that's different.)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to "about:config"
2. set "browser.fixup.alternate.prefix" to "web."
3. in the address bar, type "yahoo", and hit control-enter.


Actual Results:  
It expands "yahoo" to "www.yahoo.com".

Expected Results:  
It should expand it to "web.yahoo.com".

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

WFM with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

When I set browser.fixup.alternate.prefix to web., I set keyword.enabled to false, I type yahoo and hit Enter, it goes to http://web.yahoo.com/, which is Page Not Found - Incorrect URL :).

Comment 2

[Keith S.]

You are misunderstanding the bug, and did not follow the steps I gave to reproduce. You are making use of the domain guessing feature, which does not have this problem.

Do the same thing, but type yahoo, then hit CONTROL-ENTER. It ignores the prefix attribute, but will use the suffix one, if you changed it from .com to something else.

Comment 3

[Aaron Racine]

Reproduced with:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/2007051502 Firefox/2.0.0.4

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a6pre) Gecko/2007060204 Minefield/3.0a6pre

If you want to make sure you're seeing what I believe the reporter is reporting, then after step 2 in the STR, set "browser.fixup.alternate.suffix" to "example"; then, type "yahoo" into the location bar, press control-enter, and you should be taken to "www.yahoo.example" instead of "web.yahoo.example".

Comment 4

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

I can confirm this on Mac OS X as well.

Can we get a regression range for when this broke, assuming it did?

Full steps to see the breakage:
 1. Go to about:config
 2. Set browser.fixup.alternate.prefix to "web." (default is "www.")
 3. Set browser.fixup.alternate.suffix to ".test" (default is ".com")
 4. Type "yahoo" in the location bar
 5. Press ctrl-enter (cmd-enter on Mac)

You'll get taken to "www.yahoo.test" instead of "web.yahoo.test".

Comment 5

[David Favor]

Problem persists in latest Version 28 Beta also.

This makes testing bare domain + www content splitting impossible.

The browser.fixup.alternative.enabled fails to turn this off when set to false.

Please fix this ugly bug.

Comment 6

[Kanchan Kumari QA]

I am able to reproduce comment 4 with browser.fixup.alternate.enabled set to true or false on following version:
Version 	45.0.1
Build ID 	20160315153207
User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0

Comment 7

[Morgan Courbet]

I confirm this bug still exists following the exact steps from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=360001#c4 on the following version:

Version: 59.0.2 (64 bits)
Platform: Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark