535527 - add pref to control search suggestion timeout

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P5)

Description

[Steven Roddis]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Using the same Open Search xml file, and changing from HTTP to HTTPS prevents the suggestions from showing. The request for the suggestions is still made to the server.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Upload:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
    <ShortName>Name</ShortName>
    <Description>Whatever</Description>
    <Image width="16" height="16" type="image/x-icon">https://example.com/favicon.ico</Image>
	<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="https://example.com/suggest.php?q={searchTerms}"/>
    <Url type="text/html" method="get" template="https://example.com/search.php?search={searchTerms}&amp;titleonly=1"/>
    <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
</OpenSearchDescription>

to /litesearch.xml

Add <link href="/litesearch.xml" title="Name Search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="search"/>
to a website on a HTTPS connection.

Go to https://example.com/page.html and click on the arrow in the search bar and install the search engine.

Type something in the search engine and wait for the results.

Check to make sure a request has been made using livehttpheaders.
Actual Results:  
No suggestions
There was a request made.

Expected Results:  
Suggestions appear below the search bar.
There was a request made.

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

We have a hardcoded 500ms timeout for suggestion requests. It is possible that https overhead is causing the request to take longer than the timeout?

Comment 2

[Steven Roddis]

Ah, according the Firebug it takes 660ms to load.
What was the reasoning behind the [short] timeout? As the request is still made.

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Due to current implementation constraints, we can't show the form history results until we've received the suggestion results. The timeout was added to avoid unreasonably delaying the display of form history results.

Comment 4

[Steven Roddis]

I'd like to make a request to have this changed, so that suggestions can be shown later. I understand a change like this is not trivial.

Comment 5

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

We need to refactor the code so that form history results aren't blocked on suggestion results - that might not be trivial. Once that's done, we can increase the suggestion timeout significantly.

The only option in the interim is to bump the timeout value up. I'm wary of doing this, though, since 500ms is already quite noticeable, and having to wait more than that long for form history results is a pretty poor user experience when it occurs.

Comment 6

[Steven Roddis]

I agree that increasing the [default] timeout isn't a good idea in terms of user experience.
How about an about:config option for the timeout in the meantime?

Comment 7

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

I suppose I could probably live with a pref for testing purposes (and for people with really slow connections?).

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

It doesn't look like we've had any other requests for this over the last 9 years, and we haven't felt it necessary to add. I think we can therefore close this.