Inspired by a post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c4auky/enable_url_autocomplete_of_subdomains/

I am seeing some unexpected behavior around autofill suggestions in the addressbar.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Disable search suggestions in address bar
2. Type https://play.google.com/music/ and press enter into address bar
3. Notice page loaded is https://play.google.com/music/listen
4. close tab
5. Type pla into address bar

What happens:

The suggestions that appear are:

https://play.google.com
Google Play Music - https://play.google.com/music/listen
play.google.com - https://play.google.com/music/

Expected result:

https://play.google.com/music/listen is the page that is atuofilled, since it is the page that I actually loaded in step 2-3. Less ideal but still acceptable as a suggestion would be https://play.google.com/music/ since that is what I literally typed.

What doesn't make sense to me at all is why https://play.google.com is shown as a suggestion or autofilled - I never navigated OR typed the url.

Additionally, navigating to https://play.google.com/ would actually end up redirecting me to https://play.google.com/store which is also not where I wanted to go, so it is really a poor suggestion -- it doesn't even take me to the place it says it is going to go (and I didn't even want to go there, based on what I had previously typed).

It is worth noting that this doesn't always happen. If I navigate to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_ipsa_loquitur and then type either wiki or res, I am not suggested to go to https://en.wikipedia.org/, for example.

Please can you remember to include version and OS details in your reports. This is very useful in trying to determine if something is a regression or not, and if it is specific to certain OSes. If it isn't a specific version, that's fine just state that please, so that it is explicit.

Sure - sorry, I am running Nightly on Ubuntu Eoan.

While I was unable to find a build that autofilled my desired URL (https://play.google.com/music/listen), I was able to find that as of Firefox 5, Firefox didn't autosuggest https://play.google.com and that its first suggestion was the expected one: https://play.google.com/music/listen

The regression range below represents when Firefox began autofilling https://play.google.com

6:34.79 INFO: Narrowed nightly regression window from [2012-03-12, 2012-03-14] (2 days) to [2012-03-12, 2012-03-13] (1 days) (~0 steps left)
6:34.79 INFO: Got as far as we can go bisecting nightlies...
6:34.79 INFO: Last good revision: 5ec9524de1af (2012-03-12)
6:34.79 INFO: First bad revision: 8d1c74566a0b (2012-03-13)
6:34.79 INFO: Pushlog:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=5ec9524de1af&tochange=8d1c74566a0b

By FIrefox 41, Firefox had begun both autofilling and autosuggesting https://play.google.com (the unexpected case that prompted this bug).

The regression range below represents when Firefox began autosuggesting https://play.google.com (in addition to autofilling).

7:53.96 INFO: Narrowed nightly regression window from [2015-05-27, 2015-05-30] (3 days) to [2015-05-29, 2015-05-30] (1 days) (~0 steps left)
7:53.97 INFO: Got as far as we can go bisecting nightlies...
7:53.97 INFO: Last good revision: f986e55c4e0b (2015-05-29)
7:53.97 INFO: First bad revision: 45a4d6336c73 (2015-05-30)
7:53.97 INFO: Pushlog:
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=f986e55c4e0b&tochange=45a4d6336c73

The behavior prior to Firefox 41 is preferable to the behavior today, because autofilling feels different than suggesting - it feels odd that Firefox would suggest a URL I had never been to, and what is worse, I can't remove the "suggestion" by doing a shift+delete on it like I can for other suggestions.

Asif, thanks for filing these autofill bugs, but I think you're misunderstanding what Firefox is doing. The first result -- the one that's preselected -- is only showing you what's going to happen when you press enter. If you have a domain or URL in the input, then the first result is going to show "play.google.com -- Visit" because that's what happens when you press enter. If you have "pizza near me" in the input, then the first result will show "pizza near me -- Search with Google" because that's what will happen when you press enter. That's point 1.

Point 2 is that when you start typing play.google.com, we "autofill" the domain in the input, meaning we change the input text so that after you type "p" the input automatically becomes "play.google.com", with "lay.google.com" selected. Firefox will first start autofilling domains. If you then finish typing play.google.com and type a slash, autofill will start autofilling full URLs, piece by piece. That's what autofill means, and Firefox has worked that way for a long long time now, and we don't have plans to change that.

Point 3 is that the other results below the first result show matches in your history. That's where play.google.com/music/listen and play.google.com/music show up in your screenshot.

If I've misunderstood what you've said here and in the other bug, please let me know.

Drew, I am a longtime Firefox user, so this issue doesn't bother me so much -- but it does matter quite a bit to people used to other browsers - which is why I mentioned that this was inspired by a post on reddit.

In my testing, my STR does what I expect in Chrome. Safari does what Firefox does today. GNOME Web doesn't autofill at all (!) but seems to show me my expected URL as its first suggestion.

Point 2 is that when you start typing play.google.com, we "autofill" the domain in the input, meaning we change the input text so that after you type "p" the input automatically becomes "play.google.com", with "lay.google.com" selected. Firefox will first start autofilling domains. If you then finish typing play.google.com and type a slash, autofill will start autofilling full URLs, piece by piece. That's what autofill means, and Firefox has worked that way for a long long time now, and we don't have plans to change that.

I see no real reason why that needs to be the case, frankly. I don't think it is at all intuitive that URLs that I have never visited are autofilled for me. I would much prefer Firefox try to save me time (like Chrome does).

What is the logic behind showing the domain (even if I have never visited it by itself)? It would almost make sense if it were to "reserve" the possibility for "tab to search" like in Chrome, but I have never seen any plans to do that in Firefox - pl then Tab to search play.google.com (if it were somehow OpenSearch capable) would make more sense because it'd be weird if tab somehow turned a visited page into a search for the whole domain.

Are there plans for tab to search or can you help me understand why it makes sense to autofill to domains that I have never visited? This seems to punish power users at the expense of optimizing towards behaviors that may test well for occasional users, or users who are completing a basic task once or twice.

I would be curious if there were any data or experiments showing that the current behavior is superior to Chrome's behavior in the long run of an experienced user. I'm thinking of the trillions of keystrokes "wasted" to press down to select the first suggestion when the first suggestion is what they wanted.

A question which would be useful to answer is: for typed entries to the address bar, what percentage of them result in visits to domains the user has never visited, vs. to the FIRST suggestion.

Another quick example - I have a bookmark for https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 which I visit occasionally (a couple of times a week). I never visit https://www.weather.gov/ or https://forecast.weather.gov/ which thankfully appear below my more specific location URL.

Instead, I get an autofill for https://www.wealthfront.com/ -- a URL I may have visited years ago (why not https://forecast.weather.gov/). Firefox correctly knows that I want to go to https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095 but doesn't save me time.

Asif, thanks for filing these autofill bugs, but I think you're misunderstanding what Firefox is doing.

You are right -- I expected that the frecency algorithms in Firefox would grow to fit my habits like a glove, and "sense" what I want -- instead, it feels like I get the wrong behavior even as I continue to train the awesomebar. The awesomebar feels less awesome and more like something I need to learn.

I created a fresh profile and visited https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71499562015282&lon=-73.79142488325095

I then typed in wea. This time, I don't get an autofill at all (which is what I would expect based on your last comment) -- I would expect an autofill to https://forecast.weather.gov/ - but instead I get a suggestion for "Search with Google".

Why does that happen?

Autofill works by matching prefixes, so if your domain/URL doesn't start with what you typed, then it won't be autofilled. (An exception is for domains/URLs that start with www.) Autofill has always worked like that in Firefox. That certainly doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, or even a lot of room. But we're a small team and we haven't made autofill improvements a priority.

Autofill has always worked like that in Firefox. That certainly doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, or even a lot of room. But we're a small team and we haven't made autofill improvements a priority.

Is there an enhancement ticket that asks for something similar to what I said here? I can open one if not. No point in writing one and getting it duped. ;)

There are at least a couple of things you've said here. What I read is, (1) full URLs should be allowed to autofill at first, not only domains, and (2) we should allow autofill in the middle of URLs, not just prefixes (e.g., typing "foo" should autofill "some.long.domain.name.foo.com"). Which are both valid suggestions, but they're two separate concerns.

Long, rambling bug reports and comments that span multiple problems or suggestions make it hard for people working on Firefox to evaluate, triage, and prioritize bugs. It's much better for each bug to be focused on a specific problem.

fwiw there's been discussion about autofilling full URLs at first, and I think it's a good idea. I thought there was an open bug for it, but I couldn't find one. Having a bug for that would be useful. We could either reopen this bug and make it specifically about that suggestion, or we could file a new one.

I'll do some thinking and open some new bugs. We can dupe them if we find prior art. Thanks Drew! :)