Tested on
Firefox nightly 82.0a1 and affects:
Windows10 64bit
MacOS 10.15
Ubuntu 18.04

Description
Search Results not always visible for Amazon and Wikipedia.

I noticed that in some cases the search results in megabar are not visible using Amazon and wikipedia
This happens every time i execute firefox, and it also happens when i type the search result really fast.
I tried this using the one-offs.

steps to reproduce

1. Click on address bar
2. Type word "cats"
3. Click on amazon one off (or click on wikipedia one-off)
4. Click on address bar, press backspace to delete everything
5. Type word "cats"
6. Click on amazon one off (or click on wikipedia one-off)

or

1. Click on address bar
2. Click on amazon one off (or click on wikipedia one-off)
3. type the word "cats" really fast
4. click on address bar, press backspace to delete everything
5. Click on amazon one off (or click on wikipedia one-off)
6. type the word "cats" slowly

actual result
When i type the word cats really fast or after launching firefox, i don´t get the search results in the megabar.

expected result
I should get search results always (this happens when i do Steps5 and Step6 on windows10.
On Mac0s and ubuntu it seems to fail also on step 5 and 6

Pablo, we are having trouble reproducing this issue - can you provide a short screencast, perhaps?

Hi mike, here is the video attached.

the same thing happens if i click on the amazon one-off, and i type really fast the word "cats", i get no search suggestions.
If i click the amazon one-off, and i type slowly the word cats, i do get search suggestions.

In the video you can see how search suggestions are populated using google, i wrote 3 words (CAT) and nothing appeared, then typed the 4th (S) word and suggestions appear on google, but when i click on the amazon one-off ..no suggestions are visible.

I'll try to reproduce this locally and debug it, let's see what I can find.

Pablo, unfortunately I still can't reproduce this, I tried multiple ways on Windows 10, next I'll try on Mac to see if anything differs...
I wonder if there's a relation with the network or the system, would you have a way to try a newer Nightly on a different Network or even a different machine, to understand if this varies across them.

Hi Marco,
I tried with latest nightly and the issue is still there.

So far i tested with:
my work laptop. (has windows 10 64bit)
my personal computer (has ubuntu 20)

The only thing i can think of, is just a delay, maybe its because im in Argentina and the distance is just too much? I doubt i would get better results with a VPN since things might get slower with that, but i could try if you want.

Tomorrow i will ask people from Rumania to repeat the steps and see if they have the same issue.

thanks, appreciated.

Ok, testing around this issue is highly intermitted on normal conditions. We did catch it a few times (caught it on 81/82), especially on new profiles or puzzling as it might be after browser idle time or browser restart.

However, we managed to find something similar under low bandwidth simulation. The sweet spot is somewhere around a 50Kb/s connection, in which case the search suggestions would always fail to initialize at fist. Going back a bit, ESR78 seems to behave the same way for the low bandwidth simulated conditions, so we assume that the problem encountered here is an old problem(known?/expected?) + a race condition that might also involve search service init or re-init ?

Pablo, Adrian, I could reproduce the bug with a very strict bandwidth limiter (10Kbps), and afaict it is due to the search suggestions timeout. It may be too small if this affects people.
Could you please try creating a new integer pref browser.search.suggest.timeout and set it to 1000 and tell me if the bug goes away? If it still happens, less frequently, what about with 2000 or 5000?

Hi Marco, that works!

so far I tested it on windows10 64bit using Firefox Nightly 83.0a1
it worked with 1000, 2000, and 5000.

There is only a gap of half a second delay for the suggestions to appear.
After you click on the Amazon one off, and then you type fast. it takes like half a second but it works !

It looks like this was a dupe in the end, we're discussing what to do regarding this timeout.