390093 - Make searching with multiple engines require less steps for the user

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 335827

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Emery]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5

Change the search box to have a popup-menu on the right side which you use to select which search engine to use for the query you've entered *per-search*, instead of having to select the search engine and then press enter afterwards to submit.

Using the popup-menu method would change the current search engine, and subsequent searches submitted by pressing enter would use the current search engine.

If a search engine is selected from the popup-menu and the query field is empty this will not submit but simply change the current search engine. (debatable for consistency concerns)

This simple change would retain all of the current functionality of the search box as it is, while making searching with multiple search engines on a regularly basis require one less step from the user. I would appreciate this because I rarely use the same search engine in succession. In fact, if I was to use the same search engine I would use the search field that usually exists on the search results page of the previous search. I also realize that this is a trivial enhancement, but it's a collection of little things like this that make a UI great on the whole. =)

Reproducible: Always