462674 - autocomplete for all existing about: URIs after typing "about:"

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P3)

Description

[jan klopper]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092510 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092510 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.0.3

It would be really nice to have about: completion for the address bar, currently finding the possible options is hard since they are undocumented in the interface.

If you want to find a specific about: page, but do not know the exact name its hard to locate it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. type about: in the address bar
2. notice you do not know the precise name for the plugins name
3. go onto the web and try to formulate a search query which helps you out without knowing the name of the page you are looking for


Expected Results:  
Type about: in the address bar and have a list of the available pages

Comment 2

[jan klopper]

I didn't mean previously visited about: pages, but since there's presumably a list of available about: pages, An autocomplete function would be "awesome" (pun intended).

Comment 3

[Dave Garrett]

Un-duping. Bug 417965 requests that autocomplete work on visited about: URIs. This bug requests autocomplete for _all_ about: URIs after typing the "about:", without having to visit them at all first. Interesting idea.

Comment 4

[jan klopper]

Dave, thanks.

The "about:" could even be a page with links pointing to the available about pages.

Comment 5

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #4)
> The "about:" could even be a page with links pointing to the available about
> pages.

There is already an "about:" page. There used to be an about:about which did this.

Comment 6

[jan klopper]

Hmm, that page now just breaks for me,

Firefox can't find the file at jar:file:///usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.0.3/chrome/toolkit.jar!/content/global/aboutAbout.html.

This on Ubuntu (so this might be Ubuntu specific, im not sure.

The correct url seems to be:
jar:file:///usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.0.3/chrome/toolkit.jar!/content/global/about.xhtml

Which only links to a few about pages: licence, buildconfig and credits

Comment 7

[Dave Garrett]

"about:" is that page; "about:about" does not exist. (bug 349451)

Comment 8

[(no longer active)]

Confirming as an enhancement request.

Comment 11

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

i'm not sure if the additional code needed to support this is worth the gain. and about:about exists.

How often users have the need to "discover" about: pages? usually you go to an about: page on request (either support, options tweaking, reading an article on Firefox, filing a crash bug) all of these tasks presume you know where you're going, and discovering about:mozilla and about:robots exist does not help your task at all.

clearly "uiwanted".

Comment 12

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #11)
> and about:about exists.

Firefox just gives "The URL is not valid and cannot be loaded." which seems to be the expected behavior based on bug 349451 comment 46.

> How often users have the need to "discover" about: pages? usually you go to an
> about: page on request (either support, options tweaking, reading an article on
> Firefox, filing a crash bug) all of these tasks presume you know where you're
> going, and discovering about:mozilla and about:robots exist does not help your
> task at all.

In the autocomplete list you could sort the most likely to be needed ones like about:support, about:crashes, about:plugins, etc. up top and leave the about:robots and the like at the bottom, though further autocompleting for example "about:rob" would of course be expected to narrow it down further.

Comment 13

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Now that there's a already a whitelisted set of about: pages as part of about:about, the behavior should be to show the available pages in the pulldown once you have typed "about:" in the location bar.

Comment 16

[Dan Wolff]

Another partial solution would be to simply treat them the same as other URIs: have autocompletion on for about: URIs.

If I've visited http://mozilla.org/ it appears for autocompletion when I write either the title or the URL. If I've visited about:config, it should use that URI for autocompletion the same way.

Comment 21

[Kumar McMillan [:kumar]]

bug 1043427 isn't really the same; it asks to remember about: URLs in the awesomebar just like normal browsing history is remembered.

Comment 22

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to Kumar McMillan [:kumar] (needinfo for quickness) from comment #21)
> bug 1043427 isn't really the same; it asks to remember about: URLs in the
> awesomebar just like normal browsing history is remembered.

That would be bug 417965. They're two different solutions to the same issue. The decision in that bug was to move to this one. Technically, you could redupe to that one instead if you'd prefer, however I chose to dupe to this open bug rather than to an old WONTFIX. (duping is half about pointing the reporter/CCed to the intended existing bug on the topic, so duping to a bug no longer in use isn't ideal for issues which are not settled)

Comment 23

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

regardless we don't plan to add about uris to history, at a maximum they will be added as special results in the locationbar.

Comment 27

[Nicolas Ouellet-Payeur [:nicolaso]]

Mind if I pick this up and implement it?

Hasn't been touched in a while, and this bugs me when switching to/from Chrome. "about:preferences" is harder to type than "about:p". :-)

I think Alex's idea of using the whitelisted pages from "about:about" is great. Should we also manipulate sort order, so that "commonly used" about: URLs come first?

Comment 28

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Sure, this shouldn't have big disadvantages.
How do we define "commonly used" without data? Maybe we should start from a plain alphabetical order list, the score can always be modified later.
I think the first problem here is automatically getting the list of registered about uris.

Comment 29

[Nicolas Ouellet-Payeur [:nicolaso]]

Attachment: Bug 462674 - URLBar: Autocomplete "about:" URLs

Pages that are whitelisted for displaying on about:about can be
autocompleted in the URL bar.

MozReview-Commit-ID: BYhWUImyiJH

Comment 30

[Nicolas Ouellet-Payeur [:nicolaso]]

Attachment: Screenshot_2018-08-10_08-26-41.png

Comment 31

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Comment on attachment 8999057 [details]
Bug 462674 - URLBar: Autocomplete "about:" URLs

Marco Bonardo [::mak] has approved the revision.

Comment 32

[Nicolas Ouellet-Payeur [:nicolaso]]

Running the patch on Try:

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=24b17c31650b4eb7bf2dfaef32e875cee6ce41b2

Comment 33

[Nicolas Ouellet-Payeur [:nicolaso]]

This seems to pass on try.

mak, I can't seem to set the `checkin-needed` flag (maybe because the bug is unassigned?)

Mind helping me out? >_>

Comment 34

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I actually tried to land it yesterday, but the diff needs an unbitrot:
Error: We're sorry, Autoland could not rebase your commits for you automatically. Please manually rebase your commits and try again.

Comment 35

[Nicolas Ouellet-Payeur [:nicolaso]]

Rebased, here's the new try run:

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=e4df757428c702d15ab62ea37086db085d6f17b5

Comment 36

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/442b0454a618
URLBar: Autocomplete "about:" URLs r=mak

Comment 37

[Eliza Balazs [:ebalazs_]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/442b0454a618

Comment 38

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

For some reason autoFill doesn't seem to work correctly, I'll file a followup bug to investigate