373352 - add "Search for 'foo'" to the list of location bar autocomplete results when the user types "foo"

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Description

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

add "Search for 'foo'" to the list of location bar autocomplete results when the user types "foo"

a while back, mconnor (or beltzner?) noted that IE7 had a useful "Search for 'foo'" when you typed in the url bar.

this bug tracks adding it to Firefox.

note, mconnor also brought up the possibility of, if you choose that, then sending it to the search box and submitting it there, to help discoverability of the search box.  (but, if we do that, we should make sure everything works when the search box is not being shown in the toolbar.)

Comment 1

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

beltzner adds:

"Search for <text>..." should be the last option location bar typeahead list.   (If we can't match anything in typeahead, it'll be the only item in the list, if we can, it'll be the last item.)

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

taking, assuming we want this for Firefox 3.

Comment 3

[Robert Kaiser]

Isn't this the same thing Mozilla suite had and SeaMonkey still has?
If so, you probably can steal code from there ;-)

Comment 4

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Not a blocker, and should be de-prioritized beneath getting the basic searching/matching against Places results first. Adding polish and uiwanted.

My current feeling, fwiw, is that we probably only want to show this in the case where there *are* local matches (yes, this is contradicting comment #1, I do that a lot as I think things through). The case we're trying to cover is:

 - user remembers that they went to a page about monkeys
 - user types "monkey" in the location bar, gets partial matches
 - user scrolls through matches, none are the one he's looking for
 - last item is "search web for monkeys" instead of requiring the user to tab over to the search bar

Comment 5

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sliding to m8, at least.

Beltzner, can you give the wording you'd like to see?  

IE 7 has:  Search for "monkeys"

Would we want something similar, or something like:

Search for "monkeys" on <name of current search service>

It might be worth adding the string to the .properties file (before a l10n b1 freeze) even if the feature is not ready.

Comment 6

[Robert Kaiser]

SeaMonkey has |Search <search service> for "foo"|, just FYI.

Comment 7

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

this might sound like a hack, but hear me out.

given the async, chunking nature of url bar search with a large amount history, adding the "Search for ..." when the search is complete is a good way to indicate the local search is over.

if we showed it right away, and more results came it, the "Search more" would be pushed down and we want to avoid results jumping around under the users mouse / selection.

For small histories, the url bar autocomplete will be quickly will show up quickly, and for empty histories it would show up right away.

note, if we do bug #395161, we would show it right away.

Comment 8

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

I'm in favor of this change, I would set the text to

"Search [engine name]: [search text]"

With the appropriate search engine favicon to the left of the entry.

Comment 9

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

moving to m10

Comment 10

[ulf schreiber]

Note that this is not just an aid for beginners mousing through their local history autocomplete (the "monkey" scenario), but also a nice-to-have convenience for experienced users of Seamonkey/Mozilla Suite (which had this long before IE7), using the "arrow up" key to instantly wrap around to the "search" item at the end of the list.

Comment 11

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

fx 3 blocking minus, so clearing tm

Comment 12

[henryfhchan]

What about: "<Search Engine Name> Search for '<text>'"?
i.e. Google Search for 'hello firefox'; Yahoo! HK Search for 'byebye IE'

We won't need to follow IE8 which has 'Go to <text>' because that command searches the bookmarks, then history, then search provider and shows user input at the top while Firefox shows user input (hand inputed urls) and bookmarks and history together so it would be confusing to use "Go to".

You might want to add "Go to www.<text>.com" or "Go to www.<text>.org" instead.

Comment 13

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Think this is WONTFIX for now.