579716 - [meta] Merge the Location and Search Bars

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[imradyurrad]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:2.0b2pre) Gecko/20100717 Minefield/4.0b2pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:2.0b2pre) Gecko/20100717 Minefield/4.0b2pre

This probably won't get looked at until an RC build or later. 

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[[not reading bugmail]]

The URL is an older mockup of FF4, you might want to check the newest mockups.

Comment 2

[[not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> The URL is an older mockup of FF4

or user mockup.

Comment 3

[Peter Henkel [:Terepin]]

That doesn't mean it was abandoned.

Comment 4

[a4010956]

Why is this bug unconfirmed? Please, confirm it or wontfix it.

Comment 5

[imradyurrad]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Why is this bug unconfirmed? Please, confirm it or wontfix it.

CCing Alex.

Comment 7

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

What's the argument for doing this?  There are some serious privacy concerns about searching from the location bar, especially if we turn on suggestions there.

Comment 8

[imradyurrad]

(In reply to comment #7)
> What's the argument for doing this?  There are some serious privacy concerns
> about searching from the location bar, especially if we turn on suggestions
> there.

To follow the mockups? Aesthetic purposes? Less clutter? Ask the UX team. The privacy concerns could be addressed with an on/off switch.

Comment 9

[Siddhartha Dugar [:sdrocking]]

To start off with, can't we support one word searches from the url bar?

Comment 10

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #8)
> To follow the mockups? Aesthetic purposes? Less clutter?
These aren't very compelling reasons to sacrifice user privacy.

> Ask the UX team.
That was the point of me asking in the bug in the first place...

> The privacy concerns could be addressed with an on/off switch.
Not really.  Firefox has a track record of being privacy-conscious by default.  This would break that.

Comment 11

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

we aren't going to broadcast the text out for suggestions unless the user has specifically indicated that they want that to happen.  There are a few different ways for us to potentially do that, so the debate doesn't just come down to one bar versus privacy. I'm going to be working on mockups hopefully pretty soon, since this has some implications for home tab/new tab as well.

Comment 12

[Pedro Bessa]

Use Mozilla Labs: Awesomebar HD right now!

Regarding privacy, with Mozilla Labs: Awesomebar HD, when the awesomebar is in search mode, the user knows it, because he sees "search: " in the awesomebar. 

Awesomebar HD can be easily converted to an Awesomebar LD! Imagine:
1. an empty drop down menu
2. the search category names become bold labels there
3. the search category drop down menu items become indented there
4. a very noticeable down arrow somewhere, but where?

I took a screenshot of my firefox. I'm using Compact Menu 2, Mozilla Labs: Awesomebar HD and Firefox UI Fixer. The Ubuntu Unity Project Leader said that vertical space is expensive, so I reduced the number of vertical bars.

Comment 13

[Pedro Bessa]

Attachment: like chrome!

Comment 14

[Pedro Bessa]

Expanding on privacy, with Mozilla Labs: Awesomebar HD, before you type something, if you see "search: ", firefox is going to ask a search engine for suggestions, if you don't, firefox isn't. Simple and great.

Comment 15

[Pedro Bessa]

Did you see that? It's possible to make Firefox just like Chrome.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/compact-menu-2/
https://addons.mozilla.org/pt-BR/firefox/addon/prospector-awesomeBar-HD/
(forgot) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/padlock-icon/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-4-ui-fixer/

Comment 16

[Dave Garrett]

Pedro, this isn't a forum. The fact that extensions exist to do something requested as an in-product feature is irrelevant. Also, if at all possible, please avoid posting 4 times in a row (meaning 4 separate emails to everyone here). This was filed as an early meta/tracking bug on the subject, so we don't really need any new comments here until UX is done with the new design plans.

Comment 17

[u428464]

Looking at Australis mockups I assume that merging the location bar and the search bar is part of the next UX evolutions for Firefox ?

Comment 18

[Tomáš Komárek]

I'm strictly against merging the location and search bars. I have some unpleasant experiences with Google Chrome. I sometimes made mistakes while writing na URL and it started search instead of loading page and showing "Server not found". What bothers me most, it makes correcting the URL difficult, since it is replaced with the google.com/... URL.

Comment 19

[alex_mayorga]

For the sake of the "few ones" out there that still can grasp the concept of a URL and a 404 error please WONTFIX this.

Comment 20

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to alex_mayorga from comment #19)
> For the sake of the "few ones" out there that still can grasp the concept of
> a URL and a 404 error please WONTFIX this.

I'm not sure why you think this idea is just for those who don't know what a URL is. I personally would like to just have one simple multifunction bar instead of two. Merging the two would still show URLs, just let you more easily search from it.

Comment 22

[steve]

I think by now we know that having a separate search field doesn't deliver any better User Experience than offering a clean single bar that combines both Address bar and search. Chromium and WebKit have been like that for quite a while and whenever I happen to open FF I see this outdated look. Not sure why this is not address by developers.

What's the official Mozilla stance on this? They don't want it? I'm not sure I understand why this is not put into code already.

Comment 23

[Dave Webber]

I would seriously consider creating a fork of Fx, if this change were imposed rather than optional. I would want to see a visible preference to change this, and a notification to users who are upgrading from an earlier version of how they can restore the separate bars. 

Examples of user experience options which become impossible if this change is imposed include:
* having suggestions enabled without sending the default search engine keystrokes of:
    - URLs
    - titles of documents being sought through history and bookmarks
    - searches directed, using search keywords, to search engines other than the default
    - bookmark tags
    - bookmark keywords and any parameters which follow them
* searching for a URL, such as when looking for a cache of a document which has disappeared is unavailable due to Slashdot or DDoS, without needing to first go to a search engine’s homepage (which defeats the purpose of having a search box).
* correcting a typo for myself, rather than letter a search engine try to do it for me.

In general, I know what I’m not the average user, but I know what I’m doing with my computer, and mean exactly what I type and click, so if my browser is trying to correct me, then it is not doing what I want. I want it to take me literally. That is why for instance, my preferences include: {browser.fixup.alternate.enabled: false, browser.search.defaultenginename: "", browser.urlbar.trimURLs: false}. I would rather not keep growing the list of <about:config>-only preferences which I need to change to keep my browser from changing the meaning of what I do or hiding technical details from me.

Comment 25

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

pretty much this is done