861509 - Entering a single word should search instead of showing the error page

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 536955

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Saurabh Anand [:sawrubh]]

When I type in a single word in the location bar which does not match with anything in my history and press enter, Firefox just shows the "ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved" rather than searching for that term in the default search engine. This I feel is a poor user experience. Rather than showing the error page if we just search for that term instead it's anyway going to bring up the actual website if the user wanted that. Also if the user wants to open that website instead of searching it he can just press Ctrl+Enter after writing that term instead of pressing Enter or added a ".com". Both of these behavior will help us distinguish between when to search and when to try and open the website.

When I type two words it searches for that term which is the expected behavior.

Actual Behavior :
Typing a single word and pressing Enter brings up the Error page

Expected Behavior:
It should search for that term instead, in the default search engine, given that the term doesn't contain a ".com" in it and doesn't match with any of the items in the history.

Comment 1

[Josh Matthews [:jdm]]

I just tried going to "qwerty", which brought up no history results, and I was taken to a google search.

Comment 2

[Saurabh Anand [:sawrubh]]

Attachment: Screenshot showing the error page

So it seems that this error only comes when I'm behind a proxy server, in this case my college proxy server. When I'm on a proxy free internet connection a single word query triggers a google search. It would be interesting to find out what stops Firefox from initiating a Google search while Chrome is able to do so from it's omnibar too.

Comment 3

[Josh Matthews [:jdm]]

Patrick, can you think of any reasons why a proxy server would interfere with our search behaviour?

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Because we do a DNS lookup if you enter a single word.

Comment 5

[Saurabh Anand [:sawrubh]]

So what does the above comment mean ? Can this be fixed or not ?

Comment 6

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> So what does the above comment mean ? Can this be fixed or not ?

I remember having seen this bug reported way back...

Comment 7

[Saurabh Anand [:sawrubh]]

I hate to be pestering so much, but I just want to know if this can be fixed or not. If not, then I'll stop commenting here and asking on the status :)

Comment 8

[Saurabh Anand [:sawrubh]]

Sorry for the troubling, but any thoughts/action/progress on this bug. I would really appreciate if someone could just reply, even if just to tell that this won't or isn't possible or anything.

Thanks.

Comment 9

[Saurabh Anand [:sawrubh]]

Any thoughts on this bug ?