650039 - Remove switch-to-tab - prevents SHIFT+DEL

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 636992

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[John A. Bilicki III]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

Firefox 4 introduced an incomplete feature called switch-to-tab. This feature completely prohibits the ability to remove mistyped URLs in the address bar via Shift+Delete.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type a mistyped URL and press enter.

2. Realize you mistyped it, remove some of the last letters so the URL appears in the address bar.

3. Press the down arrow to select the item, switch-to-tab will remove the address bar drop down preventing you from pressing Shift+Delete to remove the item.
Actual Results:  
You can not remove items from auto-complete.

Expected Results:  
Switch-to-tab should not appear unless installed as an extension.

New features should not be implemented in to the browser if they interfere with underlying functionality.

Comment 1

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Removing the feature is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This bug needs to be resummarized to actually represent the use case that's causing problem in order for any action to be taken. As summarized, it's WONTFIX.

(I'm also not sure I understand the STR. Why does step 3 happen? When I have switch to tab entries, pressing the down arrow does not remove the address bar drop-down at all.)

Comment 2

[John A. Bilicki III]

When you mistype a URL there is a tendency to press enter before realizing it was mistyped. This means the mistyped URL is now in auto-complete.

While AT the URL (in the tab) then backspace some of the characters at the right to force auto-complete to display the URL. Once it appears you can press the down arrow key to select it which is when switch-to-tab closes auto-complete preventing the selection of the item in auto-complete.

Comment 3

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

(In reply to comment #2)
> Once it appears you can press the down arrow key to select it which is when
> switch-to-tab closes auto-complete preventing the selection of the item in
> auto-complete.

That's not what "switch to tab" does - you need to press enter to activate the selected "switch to tab" item and close the popup, just like any other autocomplete entry. Do you have an addon installed that could be interfering and causing this different behavior?

Comment 4

[Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Once it appears you can press the down arrow key to select it which is when
> > switch-to-tab closes auto-complete preventing the selection of the item in
> > auto-complete.
> 
> That's not what "switch to tab" does - you need to press enter to activate the
> selected "switch to tab" item and close the popup, just like any other
> autocomplete entry. Do you have an addon installed that could be interfering
> and causing this different behavior?

I think the problem is that pressing Shift-Delete when a switch-to-tab option deletes the drop-down box but leaves the "switch to tab" extra label in the location bar. Thus, when you press enter, you switch to the tab instead of deleting it (or whatever).

This seems more like a bug in a specific usecase, rather than any reason to remove the feature altogether.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

yes, the bug as it is makes no sense, please provide better steps and a title that copes with the bug you are seeing, otherwise this is not going anywhere.

Comment 6

[Matthieu Rivaud]

Works for me with given STR (FF4.0 stable). The "Switch to tab" entry is still there (while the tab exists), but the awesome bar entry is correctly deleted (I cannot bring the bad URL back once I have closed the offending tab).

Used STR for reference :

1. Enter a bad URL in the AwesomeBar and navigate to the page (www.badexample.com for instance)
2. Delete some of the last chars of the URL (this show the autocomplete popup)
3. Navigate to the "switch to tab" entry (arrows or mouse) and Press Shift+Del
4. Repeat step 2. The "switch to tab" entry is (correctly) shown. Do not navigate to the page.
5. Close the tab. Open a new tab. Enter the first chars of the wrong URL (www.badex). The suggestion popup is empty.