408133 - browser.urlbar.autoFill should use the first result in the awesomebar

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

Right now, location bar inline autocomplete only matches the beginning of the hostname or scheme, and stops after the first dot (can't narrow down past "www"!!).

Instead, it should autocomplete using the location bar dropdown results.

Comment 1

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

are we planning on enabling browser.url.autoFill by default for fx 3?

Comment 2

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

Requesting wanted-firefox3.1 – the current behaviour (in Fx 3) is weirdly inconsistent.

Comment 3

[Kemcy BEST]

I like this idea but there's a problem if the first entry is to be filled: when you typed 'a', then 'b' and then 'c', you'll probably have 3 different matches to 'a', 'ab' and 'abc' respectively. So the autofill content will keep changing and may have another slow-down in performance in addition to awesomebar search.

Maybe we only need a keyboard shortcut to quick select the first result other than 'down arrow + Enter'.

Comment 4

[Luke Iliffe (Harlequin99)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Maybe we only need a keyboard shortcut to quick select the first result other
> than 'down arrow + Enter'.

That sounds very similar to Ed Lee's Enter Selects addon in the sandbox at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7423 I found this a much better and more intuitive solution than the current autofill behaviour, and after many years reset browser.urlbar.autoFill back to false.

Comment 5

[cmtalbert]

So I have a question.  Is this bug describing this problem:
1. Tag all your online meeting notes as "meeting".
2. Go to the URL bar and type in "meeting".
3. See the result you want is first in the resulting list, hit enter.

= Actual =
Firefox will do a google search for "meeting".

= Expected =
The first search result ought to be what is selected if you do the above steps.  

FWIW, if you want to see something like this in action, check out the Safari Beta 4 build.

Let me know if I need to file a new bug for this.

Comment 6

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> So I have a question.  Is this bug describing this problem:

Yes. Or I'm subscribed to the wrong bug.

Comment 7

[Vova Olar]

Firefox 6.0 Alpha has better behaviour. See bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=566489
This bug should be closed.

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

Actually, bug 566489 only fills in URLs, and even then only parts of URLs.  For example, if I type "awesomebar" into the awesomebar and press Enter, I won't end up at this bug report.

Limi can probably explain why we chose not to do this.

Comment 9

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

The current design is made to not replace the typed chars while the user is typing them, completing to the first entry would break this and reintroduce all the reason the in the end caused us to disable autoFill in the first place.
I think that if there are issues with the new behavior they should be filed in their own bug, and this bug as it is is wontfix per the new design.

Comment 10

[Steffen Wilberg]

I use the "Enter Selects" extension. Instead of autofilling the urlbar, pressing enter selects the first awesomebar entry, without first having to press the down arrow or space.
Some examples:
"awesomb" - > this bug report
"mxr" -> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/
"sea" -> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi
"pu" -> http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml

In contrast, the default autofill code suggests all kind of random domains until you enter more characters so that they don't match anymore, or press the down arrow or space.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/enter-selects/
Make sure that "browser.urlbar.autoFill" is set to false in about:config.

Comment 11

[persona]

Autofill is super confusing and doesn't make sense with the suggestions from the awsome bar as it follows an other set of rules.

It should autofill to the first result if the typing matches or else not autofill.

This webpage explains the problem perfectly : http://www.ghacks.net/2012/01/23/firefox-12-inline-autocomplete-feature/