770967 - Allow using keyword-searching in context menu for selected text

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P5)

Description

[bogas04]

Attachment: What does this bug want Developers to do

Firefox has a feature which allows you to create keywords for any search bar you encounter while browsing , say Wikipedia , and to use this keyword to search directly from awesome bar. Assume we take "Wiki" as the keyword , so now when you want to search something on Wikipedia, you can simply type Wiki <space> <Stuff you wanna search>. This feature is really handy and somehow eliminates the use of search bar of Firefox. Now that Australis *might* kill searchbar , i guess more people might be interested in using this feature. Now this bug is about allowing users to use their own defined keywords to search any selected text from the context menu of it (See Attachment) . I hope developers will consider this.

Although very less people use keywords for searching , but those who do , would love to have this. And also fix the problem stated years back ; Bug 248173

Comment 1

[Paul [pwd]]

Not a bad idea, though the menu would quickly become overloaded if a user has a few keyword searches set up. Though said, if you look hard enough, I'm sure you'll find a bug to dupe this to. Maybe some work in there has already started and this will kick it to life.

Comment 2

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy y'all,

the menu size could be handled the same way this extension does it ...
- Context Search :: Add-ons for Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/context-search

it uses a cascaded submenu. works quite gracefully, too.

take care,
lee

Comment 3

[bogas04]

The addon is designed really well and i guess this is what should be adopted too. But however , it goes for search engines , and as per data of UX (http://trunc.it/lhx2y) only 11.1% of clicks go for changing search engines using search bar and overall just 45% clicks go for search bar , which is not VERY significant, further Australis has plans to kill search bar , and the "Search Tab" concept might replace it, so if only we could change the addon's implementation to work with Keywords (/and) search engines , it would be a big plus. 

Personally speaking , i find it easier to select a weird word in article , right click and find something "Search at dictionary.com" and boom, than to copy the text , go to the site or choose dictionary.com from search bar and then visit it. I hope the developers and the addon developer would invest their time over this.

Comment 4

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy bogas04,

while the use case in your last paragraph is why i use that extension, my intent was to point out that the "filling the context menu" problem mentioned in comment 1 is easily solved by using a similar submenu technique.

take care,
lee

Comment 5

[bogas04]

This addon does it all 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keyword-bookmarks/?src=search

It creates a submenu to avoid long context menu as well. I hope devs might consider something like this.

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I think at the current time, we're unlikely to implement something like this, or accept a patch for it. Overall there's not been much call for this, but mainly the bookmarks keywords system is due for an overhaul to better integrate with the search engine "keywords". Once that is done, it might be feasible to reconsider some of the context menu UX, but until then, I think this is basically a wontfix.