469282 - Autocomplete function changed from Firefox 2 in a non-switchable manner

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 409895

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Stephen Osborn]

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

The autocomplete function in Firefox 2 used the characters input in the Location Bar to match against the *starting* characters of the URLs entered or visited.  

In Firefox 3 this has been changed to match against the *any* characters of the URLs, or the page title, etc.

Having this new function (the 'awesome bar') available is fine, it is even fine to have it as the default but it should be switchable, so that the Firefox 2 behaviour can be selected.

I am very surprised that this is not an open bug but I have searched using a variety of criteria and looked through the lists of frequently-reported bugs and cannot see it.

Support for this requirement can be seen in bug 407836.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Visit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ more times than http://www.google.co.uk/
2. On a blank tab enter 'g' in the Location Bar
3.
Actual Results:  
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ appears as the top result

Expected Results:  
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ does not appear at all and http://www.google.co.uk/ appears as the top result

The Severity is set to major because it significantly impairs the usability for a large number of users.

Comment 1

[Jean-Marc Spaggiari]

Hi,

I totally agree with Stephen regarding this behaviour.

Waiting for a fix, I revert back to FF2 until the resolution.

Thanks for opening this defect.

JM

Comment 2

[Sylvain Pasche]

The new location bar is able to learn from what you type and what page you select in the list.  If you type "g", and select the google entry, the next time you type "g", it should be the first selected entry (or after a few times depending on your visits count).