User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0

Steps to reproduce:

Attempted to perform a web search from the New Tab Page's in-content search bar, while having the "keyword.enabled" pref set to "false" so as to avoid accidentally sending web searches when mistyping a URL or search term in the address bar.

Actual results:

Keyboard focus was sent to the address bar, and no search shortcut was chosen, let alone the shortcut for the search engine that would otherwise have been used by the in-content search bar.

Due to having keyword.enabled = false, any search performed from the address bar will simply fail without manually choosing a search engine shortcut.

Expected results:

One of two possibilities:

• When switching keyboard focus to the address bar from the in-content search bar, the address bar should automatically choose the default search engine. This is what used to happen when using the search bar in Private Windows, but no longer does (making this a regression).
• Keyboard focus shouldn't be moved from the in-content search bar at all.

This is of course fixed by setting "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar" (a pref I only found just now) to false, but it doesn't fix the issue in Private Windows (since it doesn't use the New Tab Page).

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Address Bar' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

I spoke with Product about this. For users with keyword.enabled = false, searches should be handed off to the address bar in the default engine's Search Mode. This will enable searches and suggestions for those users. Also the search box should read "Search the Web" in that case. This means we're essentially reverting parts 1 and 3 of bug 1616700 for users with keyword.enabled = false.

My Firefox was obviousoy updated today to version 89.0 (or the search engine was updated) and then the search focus suddenly started to move from the new tab search field to the address bar while it didn't do that before. I have "keyword.enabled = false" but deactivated the option for "show search suggestions in address bar" in the settings. Trying to solve the issue brought me to this bug.

I find it very annoying that the search via address bar is now handled the same way as with Edge and Chrome without a possibility to effectively change it, especially since "keyword.enabled = false" can't be used as a suitable alternative. The behaviour should be like it was before again. It can't be that the setting is simply ignored.

Thanks for your feedback, we agree the current solution is wrong and we'll provide a fix in this bug.

This patch also addresses bug 1645293. It essentially reverts parts 1 and 3 of bug 1616700 for users with searching disabled. Since we had to introduce branching behaviour, there are some new constructs like a shouldHandOffToSearchMode multi-pref in UrlbarPrefs.

Backed out for bc failures on browser_contentSearchUI_default.js.

Push with failures: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=autoland&resultStatus=testfailed%2Cbusted%2Cexception%2Cretry%2Cusercancel&revision=5a673b05aea0ec12c286fe535c254059bdb4adfd&selectedTaskRun=fuUtR9nXQbatrCNymk8yHw.0

Failure log: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=345807968&repo=autoland

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/66daae79dd5e5292a6cd2bbb7035682039a82084

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/71d99327b252

Hi Harry , i have been testing this on Windows 10 and Mac 10.15 so far using firefox nightly 92.0a1

And i noticed this:

1. after i flip the keyword.enabled to false ,
2. i go into private mode (new private window)
3. i type "miami" or "cnn" in the url bar and hit enter

i get a "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site."

while on normal browsing mode, if i type cnn in the url bar it goes to the CCN website. And using an older version of firefox like nightly 89, if i do the same steps it works,

should i log a brand new bug because of this?

replicated the issue with firefox release 89.0

Verified fix on Windows 10 64bit, MacOs 10.15 and Ubuntu 20
using Firefox nightly 92.0a1 (2021-07-29) 20210729172617

Note i have opened a new bug for the issue found with keyword.enabled = false + New private window since it fails to do a search in the url bar.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1723048

(In reply to Pablo from comment #18)

Hi Harry , i have been testing this on Windows 10 and Mac 10.15 so far using firefox nightly 92.0a1

And i noticed this:

1. after i flip the keyword.enabled to false ,
2. i go into private mode (new private window)
3. i type "miami" or "cnn" in the url bar and hit enter

i get a "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site."

I commented in the other bug you opened, but it's expected that searching in the address bar doesn't work when keyword.enabled = false.

while on normal browsing mode, if i type cnn in the url bar it goes to the CCN website. And using an older version of firefox like nightly 89, if i do the same steps it works,

This is very surprising. Are you sure that keyword.enabled was false in the normal window? And that typing cnn and pressing enter performed a search?

Hi harry , Im sure

This is how it is currently working:

Stock install - brand new profile:

1. in about config keyword.enable shows as TRUE (this shows by default)
   In Normal browsing mode, If i search "cnn" in urlbar and hit enter: It does a google search for cnn
   In private browsing, if i do a search for "cnn" in urlbar and hit enter: it does a google search for cnn

2. I change keyword.enable to FALSE in about config:
   In default browsing mode, if i search for "cnn" in urlbar and hit enter, it goes to the cnn website (https://edition.cnn.com/)
   In private browsing, if i do a search for "cnn" in url bar and hit enter, it fails "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site".

Ah, yes, I think that's URIFixup adding .com to http://cnn. This is working as expected. Thanks for looking into it.

As per v.91 search from URL bar works, but it is not possible to search from the search form, even with keyword.enabled=false.
There is a big difference in using two these controls:

1. URL bar is not in the windows center and this distorts, as it requiers moving the user's focus away form the original place. And with keyword.enabled=false the user cannot start typeing in the search window
2. Font in the URL bar is fixed, while font in the search form is adjustable

Please restore the old good beaviour of keyword.enabled=false and let the users using big field in the center of the window/screen

Having tested it with v92 I first thought the same as eugene. But then I found out that typing in the search form works if an additional change is done in about:config:
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar = false

I really don't understand why it doesn't work by just switching keyword.enabled to false or even by only deactivating the relevant option "show search suggestion in address bar" in the settings.