465361 - incremental link search should prioritize visible links

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Disability Access, enhancement)

Description

[manuelarriaga]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4

When doing an incremental search for a link ("quick find (links only)" is what shows up at the bottom of the window; the default keyboard shortcut for this is the apostrophe key), currently visible links which match the input text should be given priority over matching links which are in parts of the page not currently being viewed. 

A user who cannot use a mouse and wants to follow a link can only use this search function to easily "click" a link. Suppose you have been reading a page and see right in front of your eyes the link you want to follow. You press apostrophe, insert part of the string caption of that link and... Firefox will often zoom you back to the top of the page, since there is another matching link right there! 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a page where two links with the caption "dog" occur in positions where they cannot both be simultaneously viewed (given the size of your Firefox window and screen resolution).
2. Navigate to the part of the page where the *second* such link is visible.
3. Press 'apostrophe' to active the "quick search (links only)" feature.
4. Type into the search box 'dog'.

Actual Results:  
After performing the four actions I described above, Firefox will take you to the *first* matching 'dog' link, rather than highlighting/selecting the link you were viewing at the moment you pressed the apostrophe key.

This is extremely disorienting and frustrating behavior. 

Expected Results:  
I suggest that links *which are currently visible* be given priority when using the incremental search for links feature. I believe one can safely assume that a user who presses the apostrophe key is interested in highlighting/selecting a link which is currently visible, rather than one in a part of the page which she cannot currently see.

Comment 1

[Foopey]

I agree that the current behavior of the quick link find feature is problematic. Personally I would prefer that visible links be searched exclusively rather than just prioritized. Maybe that could be an option.

Comment 2

[islisis]

It would be very nice to have this as a configuration default behaviour, and option in the dialog bar.

According to this document the Find as you Type function was supposed to prefer text visible on the page.
http://www.mozilla.org/access/type-ahead/

I hope there is some way to bring this back and invoke it for find in links also.