578527 - CC field autocomplete prevents my browser's autocomplete from working

Status: NEW

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, defect)

Description

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

My browser's autocomplete is much more useful, because I frequently CC the same people, and so it's a) faster and b) provides more relevant results (it does frecency ranking). The new autocomplete is better for when I'm CCing someone I've never CCed before, but that happens rarely.

I'd like the option to either disable Bugzilla's autocomplete, or have it fixed so that it doesn't override the built-in one (this might be hard).

Comment 1

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

pyrzak: Is there some way to include the browser's autocomplete in the YUI search results? I sort of thought there was, but maybe I am incorrect.

If there isn't, we should add a user preference to turn off the AJAX autocomplete. I actually have a similar personal experience to gavin--that as a power user, my browser autocomplete is full of useful stuff.

Comment 2

[Michael Thomas (Mockodin)]

There is a option in YUI autocomplete to disable the browser's builtin autocomplete. not having looked yet, is that set in the new code? If so perhaps we can make it optional or remove it?

Comment 3

[Guy Pyrzak]

If we turn on autocomplete from the browser you get both interfaces which is kinda horrible and makes both not very usable. However, if we make the wait time on the autocomplete a bit longer it might not be so bad or we could do the pref, we'd have to play around with it.

I did just notice Google's homepage which uses autocomplete also disables the browsers built in autocomplete. So this might just be an unfortunate side effect of autocompletes.

Comment 4

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I did just notice Google's homepage which uses autocomplete also disables the
> browsers built in autocomplete.

  However, it also keeps track of things you type into the field, and puts them at the top of the list.

  Anyhow, I don't think a delay is a good idea.

Comment 5

[Guy Pyrzak]

am i smelling a fancy semi-hidden feature? keep track of users past autocompletes and put them at the top of the list? This is something we've discussed in the past with Aza.

Comment 6

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

Let's not turn this bug into a reimplementation of autocomplete. If having both autocomplete popups work concurrently is impossible (as I suspected), please just make it a user pref.

Comment 7

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Gavin, I fully understand your pain here, but looking at our options for resolving it, I don't think that I can block 4.0 on this for now. We're not in a place where we really want to add any more preferences at this point unless there's a *really* significant demand for them, from a lot of users.

Comment 8

[Guy Pyrzak]

I could provide a jetpack/greasemonkey script that will disable any of the autocompletes if that is helpful. Gavin would that help?

Comment 9

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to :Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]] from comment #0)
> My browser's autocomplete is much more useful, because I frequently CC the
> same people, and so it's a) faster and b) provides more relevant results (it
> does frecency ranking).

Frequency ranking is bug 1217538.

Comment 10

[moskalenko]

(In reply to Frédéric Buclin from comment #9)
> (In reply to :Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]] from comment #0)
> > My browser's autocomplete is much more useful, because I frequently CC the
> > same people, and so it's a) faster and b) provides more relevant results (it
> > does frecency ranking).
> 
> Frequency ranking is bug 1217538.

It's not just about frequency ranking, but about long list of cc's. It takes a long time to rebuild each of those lists using the ajax_user_autocompletion and it has to be done on every bug. Allowing users to opt for browser autocompletion would remedy this to a large degree. A hybrid display, like that used by suggest_duplicates may also be desirable, but since it's been 5 years since the main conversation it doesn't look likely to be implemented.