672616 - Smart keyword search fails on fast input

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[marc.harris-4o0cj2j9]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:5.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0
Build ID: 20110615151330

Steps to reproduce:

Enter a keyword search term into address bar very quickly, 
e.g. by pasting the term (ctrl+v) "e used computer" (e is the keyword for ebay and should trigger an ebay search) and VERY QUICKLY hit enter (within the next 300ms or so)


Actual results:

I end up at google (my default search engine), searching for the term "e used computer".
It seems like FF doesn't recognize the keyword that fast and handles the term it as normal text, entered in the address bar.


Expected results:

I should have ended up at ebay, searching for "used computer".

Comment 1

[mozaexht]

This one affects me too, and is very annoying.

Though, the description given by the reporter doesn't seem to be accurate to me. The problem is not specific to the keyword search feature; the behaviour is exactly the same with any bookmark.

Let's say I have site `foobar.org` bookmarked, and I visit it frequently enough so when I type in `foo` in the address bar in is always the first candidate. Naturally, I'm developing a habit of quickly typing `Ctrl-t foo RET` in order to open the site in a new tab. However, if I, let's say, have just started the firefox (so it's still perfoming some IO operations in the background), the same sequence of commands (Ctrl-t foo RET) will result in my default search engine open in the new tab, with the "foo" as a search term.

I believe the problem should be acknowledged as a bug (isn't it a race condition after all?). I also believe it's important enough, and I can see how it can break user privacy by exposing sensitive data the user not meant to share to search engines. I understand though it's not that easy to reproduce; the most obvious ways is to start a fresh instance of firefox and perform the Ctrl-t <part of url or bookmark name> RET sequence immediately or to load the machine running firefox with some heavy CPU\IO task and then perform the same sequence.

I hope this issue will get some attention from the developers, and thank you very much for the work you do.