366641 - location autocomplete should not include invalid entries.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Lloyd Wood]

When I start typing a url autocomplete shows me every related typing error I ever made.

To fix this:
if a new not-seen-before url doesn't resolve to or return anything, don't add
it to the list of known urls.

I'm not asking you to remove a url from the autocomplete list when it goes 404, since that might be temporary, or when a site is down, again temporary. I'm not asking you to edit the list in any way. Purging the list is not desirable for a number of reasons; you might purge something that's wanted.

I'm asking you to be more selective about what you let on the list in the first
place. If it doesn't return anything, don't let it on the list. Raise the
barrier to entry.


So, create a list of newly-seen urls, and only move a url that was entered from
that table to the list of urls for the drop-down list once it has been shown to
resolve to something. (What the urls resolve to might change over time, but
that doesn't matter, and each url shouldn't be updated depending on a 301/302
redirect - this is about matching whatever shortcut the user types, and storing that shortcut IF it resolves to something.)

You'd think that this would be related to bug 9203, but apparently it's not, because location autocomplete (when you start typing a url and firefox pops up a list of suggestions) is not the same as location drop-down (when you click the downward-pointing arrow at the right of the url bar). Even though they look _exactly the same_ onscreen. They look the same - popup with list of urls - but they're different! Like a user can tell.

This is worse than having both Find and QuickFind, where Quickfind is just Find without the options. At least the user can see there's a difference there.

This is incredibly bad from a UI perspective, and apparently someone needs to point this out. And  bugzilla lists the same category (location bar and autocomplete) for both.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a2pre) Gecko/20070110 Minefield/3.0a2pre
WFM in trunk. In branch I see non-existing URLs indeed in the drop-down but after a restart they are gone.

Comment 2

[AndrewM]

This problem does not exist anymore in trunk nightlies; I believe due to the switch to Places and SQLite.

For example, type into the location bar: http://www.9sldjfsdasdlfkjs.co.uk/ or any other random characters and a suitable TLD (.com, .net, .org, .info and .eu for some reason gets me to a Verizon error page).

Observe that when you get a Server not found Firefox error page, the fake URL in question has not been added to either the location bar dropdown or autocomplete.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9a9pre) Gecko/2007101204 Minefield/3.0a9pre ID:2007101204

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Resolving WORKSFORME per comment 1 and comment 2. This bug will not exist anymore in Firefox 3.