Closed Bug 531044 Opened 15 years ago Closed 7 years ago

Add pref to display auto-complete dropdowns in forms alphabetically again

Categories

(Toolkit :: Form Manager, enhancement)

enhancement
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: mail, Unassigned)

References

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-GB; rv:1.9.2b3) Gecko/20091115 Firefox/3.6b3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-GB; rv:1.9.2b3) Gecko/20091115 Firefox/3.6b3

I notice that autocomplete for web forms has been amended in 3.6b3 from being alphabetical to being in order of 'most used'. In my day to day work I rely on the contents being in the same order to speed things up eg I type '1' and then press the down cursor 8 times and I know what text that will enter. I know it may be purely selfish but it actually makes it more difficult to find what you are wanting if it is in order of 'most used' as I now need to look through the list to find which I want or type more to narrow the options down (which seems counter-intuitive for something meant to speed up filling out forms!)

Is there any chance of making it an option either in the main settings or as a 'hack' in about:config? For general form filling it is a great feature to order it by 'most used' but not in every case.

I don;t think it's a 'bug' as such so have marked it as an enhancement request for now!

Reproducible: Always
Component: Location Bar and Autocomplete → Form Manager
Product: Firefox → Toolkit
QA Contact: location.bar → form.manager
The form history drop-down in Firefox 3.6+ is now sorted by frecency.  See the use case and progress sections for some info about the changes: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Namoroka/Improved_form_history#Use_Cases

If you want to sort your form history results alphabetically, you can increase the size of 'browser.formfill.bucketSize' in about:config.  This number specifies 
the "range of relevancy values to group together and sort alphabetically" so if you specify the size as 999999999 then in most cases, assuming other preferences are the default, all of the results will be sorted alphabetically.

You can look at a description of the configuration preferences at:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Namoroka/Improved_form_history#Configuration
OS: Mac OS X → All
Hardware: x86 → All
Please update if you are able to still reproduce and also update did the link
mentioned in  Comment 1 helped you?
Whiteboard: [closeme 2010-06-04]
In Firefox 3.6.6 the "bucketSize = 999999999" doesn't seem to work. In this post (https://support.mozilla.com/si/forum/1/562864) soma_kuruso says it's eight 9's, edmeister says it's seven 9's... I've tried it all, no joy. Also as per this post (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/599149) tried timeGroupingSize = 0, no joy there either.

I still use FF2 a lot because of many little "quirks" like this in FF3 that add up to a major pain.
Confirmed in Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b9pre) Gecko/20110101 Firefox/4.0b9pre ID:20110101030401
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Summary: Option to display Auto-Complete in Forms Alphabetically or by Most Used → Add pref to display auto-complete dropdowns in forms alphabetically again
Whiteboard: [closeme 2010-06-04]
Version: unspecified → Trunk
As per comment 1, changing the bucketSize seems to work for me. Can I get confirmation as to whether this bug still persists?
Given the tiny volume of complaints I don't think we'd support this.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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