407922 - Changing the Search plug in order for en-US from alpha to category based

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P3)

Description

[Mic Berman]

Suggesting to change the search plug in order from alphabetical after Google and Yahoo to use this structure. my recommended order would be
Google
Yahoo
Commerce engines (in en-US that's Amazon and eBay)
General interest (in en-US that's Answers, Creative Commons and Wikipedia)

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I think that CC is a bit more specialized, my suggested order is in the other bug.

Comment 2

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Ordering all is technically hard, btw, as we're not good with variable amounts of browser.search.order. pref redirects in firefox.js. In particular when it comes down to the localization of that, as that currently requires playing games with firefox-l10n.js.

Comment 3

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

To detail: I recall that we pondered just adding 10 ordered searches, and I think we had technical problems with that, gavin might recall more.

Basically, the problem is that we have between 2 and 8 search plugins in l10n, and there are worries about adding both too many and too few explicit orderings in firefox.js. And I'm worried about adding them all to firefox-l10n.js, as there's no proven testing at all for that.

I'm not sure if any of the thoughts here can break seamonkey beyond compare here.

Comment 4

[Mic Berman]

IMHO, i think it'd be nice to have category-based but given technical and logistics to arrange and track, it might too much trouble for a "nice to have" than a necessary feature. I don't think users will be troubled to not understand an alpha ordering over a category based. So, all that to say, I vote for Google first, alpha following. 

Comment 5

[Mic Berman]

sorry for double post, just had good conversation with beltzner/gavin and here's where we landed.
for en-US (for which this bug is filed), we can/should make it category base as it's a better user experience.
for l10n if the localizer wishes to follow a category based order they can do so and we (l10n) will track same. if they don't want to do that, then the default order for l10n will be google first alpha following and is considered a good alternative user experience.
finally, beyond 7 search engine's it will be difficult to impose an order which we're willing to live with

Comment 6

[John Lilly]

i object to changing the search order without understanding what a "good" ordering is. why do we think google-then-alpha is a good idea? as i've said in other bugs, i don't think we should mess with this unless we really, really understand what we're doing and why.

Comment 7

[John Lilly]

and to add another thought here: axel just explicitly stated that there's no good way to test this, and so i don't want to make any change at all, honestly. 

Comment 8

[Mic Berman]

correction to my comment #5 (my apologies for the noise) - i should have written google, yahoo then alpha ordering which is the way we do things now i.e., no change for l10n

Comment 9

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

First, this doesn't need to block the final release. It's a nice to have, not essential.

Second, I now fully understand what Axel's talking about in comment 2 (thanks, Gavin!) and for those following along at home, the basic deal is:

 - we currently use prefs to do explicit ordering
 - all locales must have values for these prefs
 - right now, the only way to add more ordering is to add more prefs
 - we're not sure that all locales have enough engines for all those new prefs

I still think that semantic ordering ultimately makes better sense than alphabetical, but it's not a big enough deal to push hard to get it in Firefox 3, so I suggest we regroup & rethink the way we do search engine ordering and come back to this later.

Comment 10

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

Not going to do this now.