417209 - location field should not be rounded – it's not a search field

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Helge Grimm]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; de; rv:1.9b3) Gecko/2008020511 Firefox/3.0b3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; de; rv:1.9b3) Gecko/2008020511 Firefox/3.0b3

Rounded text fields are used exclusively for search fields on Mac OS X. The Mac theme in Firefox Beta 3 uses a rounded location field.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Confirming bug based on Apple HIG:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGControls/chapter_19_section_6.html

Using rounded corners in other text fields will confuse the users.

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

It does act kinda like a search field when you type into it, fwiw.

Comment 3

[Mike Marco]

(In reply to comment #2)
> It does act kinda like a search field when you type into it, fwiw.

This is true of Safari as well--but Safari's location field doesn't have rounded edges.

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> It does act kinda like a search field when you type into it, fwiw.

I don't agree at all. Under this condition any text field with auto-complete has to be a search field. I don't think that this is the expected appearance.

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

Firefox's address bar does more than autocomplete what you're typing.  It searches URLs and titles in bookmarks and history (not just the beginning of URLs).  Also, pressing enter after typing something that isn't a URL will do a Google BBN search.

I'm not sure that justifies making it rounded, since most of the time its purpose is to let you see what page you're on, but it is more "searchy" than a textbox with simple autocomplete.

Comment 6

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

Rounding the edges to make it look like a search field is definitely intentional, as what we're doing in the location bar (as Jesse points out in comment 5) is much, much more than autocomplete.

Comment 7

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

Also note bug 396816, where we are going to have the field literally describe itself as a search field using grey text.