711206 - The text "Enter Search or Address" should appear in the awesomebar on the start page AND the awesomescreen from the start page

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android :: General, defect, P4)

Description

[Mary Trombley]

Web page or screen you were on when you saw the issue: About:home and awesomescreen

Steps to reproduce:
1. Start at about:home. The awesomebar shows the string "Nightly Start"
2. Click in the awesomebar
3. The awesomescreen shows the string "about:home"
4. Both these strings do not give the user the idea that tapping in the awesomebar is the way to start a search.

What you expected: Have the text "Enter Search or Address" in the field when a user is on the start page AND when they've tapped through to the awesomescreen from the start page.

Crash report ID (if applicable):

Comment 1

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Yes - agreed. Let's do this!

Comment 2

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Oh - weird - it's showing the string "Enter Search or Address" for a bit when the page loads, and then it gets replaced with "Nightly Start." Is this because we usually show the URL until we get the title, and we've faked in that string for the URL?

Comment 3

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Attachment: patch

This patch special-cases about:home to keep the urlbar empty, which addresses Mary's concerns from comment 0.

Comment 4

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

I kinda disagree with #3 in comment 0. All webpages should have a URL. In this case, the text should be selected and ready to be replaced with whatever the user types.

#1 is fine and we actually did that in XUL Fennec using the <title> of the about:home page itself - it was set to "Enter Search or Address"

I think we should do the same thing here, reducing the amount of hardcoding special behavior for "about:home" - we have enough already.

Comment 5

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Comment on attachment 589316 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

I'll write a new patch to address mfinkle's comments.

Comment 6

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #4)
> #1 is fine and we actually did that in XUL Fennec using the <title> of the
> about:home page itself - it was set to "Enter Search or Address"
> 
> I think we should do the same thing here, reducing the amount of hardcoding
> special behavior for "about:home" - we have enough already.

Actually, this won't prevent the jankiness where we briefly show the "about:home" URL before we get the title of the page (we call setTitle when we first get the url, then we call it again when/if we get a title). Also, it will change from gray placeholder text to black title text. And also, we still keep about:home as a history entry, and if we change the title to "Enter Search or Address" that will show up in the awesomebar results, which seems bad.

I agree with your point about all pages having a URL, and I know hard-coding behavior for about:home sucks, but it might be worth it in this place to stop the UI from jumping around. (So just the BrowserToolbar part of the patch.)

Comment 7

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Comment on attachment 589316 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

OK, based on the situation, using the BrowserToolbar.java part of this patch seems like a good compromise.

r+ with the AwesomeBar.java part removed.

Comment 8

[:Margaret Leibovic]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/1b9c27fad1b9

Comment 9

[Marco Bonardo [::mak]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1b9c27fad1b9

Comment 10

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Comment on attachment 589316 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

[Approval Request Comment]
Mobile-only. Fixes janky UI on startup.

Comment 11

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Comment on attachment 589316 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

[Triage Comment]
Mobile only - approved for Aurora.

Comment 12

[:Margaret Leibovic]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/6fa1b61cf405

Comment 13

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Verified on M-C

Samsung Galaxy SII (Android 2.3.4) & Nexus S (Android 4.0.3)
20120119042014

Comment 14

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Verified on M-A
Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.0.3)

20120126053754
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/9d5ede8cb11a