Open Bug 253331 Opened 20 years ago Updated 1 year ago

Search bar's text should be cleared after a search is performed

Categories

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P5)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Search
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: j_geurtsen, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Keywords: blocked-ux, polish, privacy, Whiteboard: [fxsearch])

Attachments

(2 files, 1 obsolete file)

clear the text after two minutes and at least 30 seconds idle time
(deleted), patch
faaborg
: ui-review-
Details | Diff | Splinter Review
Bug 253331 - Search bar's text should be cleared after a search is performed (optional via about:config setting), r=standard8
(deleted), text/x-phabricator-request
Details
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040718 Firefox/0.9.1+ Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040718 Firefox/0.9.1+ When you search via the search bar, the search term should be cleared from the input field. If users want to repeat the search, they can scroll through the list and select the previous search term. I don't know if this is a bug or done on purpose, but please reconsider if so! Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR?
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0?
Yes it woudl make more sense if the search bar cleared by itself because the user has to select and delete the previous text before making a new search.
addition: When you use the search bar, the search result is also displayed by the site the searchbox loads (for example google). So the search can be repeated by selecting the entry from the drop down list, and refined when displayed on the search website. Leaving the term in the box is just annoying because users have to clear the result before making another search.
confirmed with latest branch builds. It seems right to clear the topic from the search field on Enter.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
A "Clear" button to clear the current search argument AND unselect the highlighted results should be added. This bug links to bug #253793, also about terminating the Search function.
(In reply to comment #4) > A "Clear" button to clear the current search argument AND unselect the > highlighted results should be added. > > This bug links to bug #253793, also about terminating the Search function. > > This bug is about the search bar (next to the location bar), not the search function :)
for privacy reasons we need to clear search history... can some one make a patch?
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR?
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR+
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0?
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0+
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
oops. guess my comment above should go to a different bug. filed that one as http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256201
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR-
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR+
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0-
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0+
(In reply to comment #4) > A "Clear" button to clear the current search argument AND unselect the > highlighted results should be added. > > This bug links to bug #253793, also about terminating the Search function. > > I am sorry for the confusion, but the problem is very similar.
Where did the blocking flag go? This should be really, really easy to fix.
It would be awsome to see this before 1.0. Thanks!
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR-
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0?
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0-
Eric, once a developer has set a flag to either - or +, it shouldn't be changed except by a developer. Also, Bugzilla is for technical comments rather than advocacy. Resetting blocking-aviary1.0- and blocking-aviary1.0PR-
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR-
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0?
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0-
Oh, sorry about that. I guess I didn't notice it was set to "-" already.
*** Bug 260578 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 262612 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Flags: blocking-aviary1.1+
Flags: blocking-aviary1.1+ → blocking-aviary1.1?
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0PR-
Flags: blocking-aviary1.0-
Whiteboard: [asaP1]
updating summary to be more descriptive.
Summary: Search doesn't clear. → Search bar's text should be cleared after a search is performed
Version: unspecified → Trunk
*** Bug 276789 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Search entries should not persist across new tabs or new windows but should persist within the original tab or window. I don't believe that search text should simply be cleared.
Whiteboard: [asaP1]
Asa, under what use-case model would you need the search string to persist in the same tab? When, for example, you use any of the default search engines, the string used will already be available for edit within the frame of the searchsite's page, so if you want to make multiple similar/refined queries, you already have the search string in the edit-box at the search site. I'm not saying there isn't a use for persistence, I'm only saying that if there is a use, I believe it is a minority use-case ... and I myself haven't yet encountered it :)
Simple use case: Search on foo, pick the fourth result, realize that you're not getting clear enough results and you need to add more terms to filter on. If the search term is there, you click in the search bar, add the new terms and hit enter. If we clear, its either retype a bit, autocomplete, add new terms, or go back to the search results, scroll back up, click in the field, and add more terms. Personally, I use this behaviour all of the time in the above scenario, adding extra steps to edit search results in that scenario needs something very compelling to justify the hit to usability there. if you hit ctrl-K or click on the terms, they highlight just like the url bar, at least on Windows (and other platforms can have this behaviour via the clickselectsall pref in about:config). So this isn't a real obstacle to new searches except maybe on Linux and OS X, and since its now "normal" behaviour, there simply isn't a strong enough reason to change this.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
Flags: blocking-aviary1.1? → blocking-aviary1.1-
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Interesting use-case. Typically, I mouse-2 click on search results to open a new tab if I'm unsure of the result, and even if not, clicking back will restore the search form page that already includes the search keys within the frame of the search site. So in my experience, refining the search keys in the browser fast-search box is still a minority use-case, but thanks for the tip on clickselectsall pref in about:config because that's maybe awkward for the majority usecase, but less awkward than the triple-click I've been using (to use ctrl-K you must be at the start of the string, so it's really Home,Ctrl-K) Wouldn't your use-case of previous edit modifications be served by a simple command-history? Up-Arrow, edit and hit return; simple and fast, and doesn't even require the mouse.
*** Bug 306002 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is seriously annoying. I've yet to reuse the previous search result. Moreover the case where you add terms would be impractical for the search bar anyway because: 1) you can't have more than a couple of words in that small bar anyway, 2) you will already have the page opened and would be more likely to enter the added terms in the page rather than in the bar.
See also bug 291036, "'Clear Saved Form Data Now' should clear Search Bar's current contents".
Attached patch patch (obsolete) (deleted) — — Splinter Review
(In reply to comment #19) > Simple use case: Search on foo, pick the fourth result, realize that you're not > getting clear enough results and you need to add more terms to filter on. If > the search term is there, you click in the search bar, add the new terms and hit > enter. Mike, what if it stuck around for a bit before clearing? I don't mind that it's there for a few seconds (and I can see the use case) - but I always find it jarring to see what I googled hours ago, or amusing to see what other people googled last. My other reason for wanting this is that I'd like to middle-click-paste things into the search box (when I'm using linux); currently I see no way of doing this without extra clicks / keystrokes. This patch obviously needs work (probably indentation, probably an actual method rather than inline function(), and maybe some configurability, or at least more testing to pick the fade speed and threshold) but it's PoC.
Attachment #336147 - Flags: ui-review?
Attachment #336147 - Flags: review?(mconnor)
Attachment #336147 - Flags: ui-review? → ui-review?(beltzner)
A) Reopening since Chris has a super duper wicked awesome patch that addresses this. Chris makes a perfect argument about this. B) Chris says this is against branch, but it looks like it'll apply just fine to trunk. If they want the old search, it doesn't break search history at all, so the last made search is still there if a user wants it. I don't think users are really likely to say "Hey, I need to edit the last search I made 2 hours ago!" The best way to determine which behavior users prefer is to implement this in a testing cycle and get user feedback. Several of us feel this will be generally well received by users as a whole, moreso than the current behavior. C) I second the motion for a review, motion passes. Beltzner needs more work anyway.
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: WONTFIX → ---
Comment on attachment 336147 [details] [diff] [review] patch I don't think a timeout is the way to go here, as it's not predictable or understandable (people have a pretty bad mental image of time) and also not really in the user's control. Think of all the times you've had to run to catch a bus or elevator door and just missed it: we don't want that sort of frustration to be due to our UI. :) Instead, I think what we want to do here is consider the tasks that mconnor rightly points out (refinement of an existing search, ability to re-run a search on a different engine) and balance them against the concerns represented by the request for enhancement (privacy, lack of relevance of something you searched for hours or days ago to your current task at hand). I do think it's worth re-considering, as this bug is old enough that typical browsing behaviour has changed, and it's now reasonable to expect one to have left their browser open for days or even weeks at a time. When a user refines an existing search or re-runs that search with a different engine, it's usually because the results found the first time weren't satisfactory. So the flow would be: - search - hmm, no - refine I think it's fairly safe to say that if a user starts navigating after a search, they're on to different things. As such, I recommend that we follow this heuristic: * After a user searches, the Search Bar shall retain the search terms up until the user performs a navigation task or switches tabs; if a user opens a new tab, the search terms will be retained.
Attachment #336147 - Flags: ui-review?(beltzner) → ui-review-
(In reply to comment #30) > * After a user searches, the Search Bar shall retain the search terms up until > the user performs a navigation task or switches tabs; if a user opens a new > tab, the search terms will be retained. One potential problem with this - the default for the search box is to replace the current tab, so I would guess that it's not uncommon to enter a search, realize "oh crap I wanted this page", hit the back button, open a new tab, and run the search again (at least, I tend to do this before getting around to changing the pref to open in a new tab). By this heuristic the search would be gone before you could re-run it.
With the new search widget in Firefox 3.1 the search bar is irritating me because it has a different behavior as all the other similar looking search textboxes. The search bar doesn't base on the search widget and doesn't offer a clear button. So if users have entered text into the textbox the search button isn't replaced by the clear icon (cross image). Clearing the text needs an extra key press. As I can see there are different opinions about clearing the content after a search or not. Wouldn't it be good to have a clear icon at least to be able to easily clear the search term?
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: PC → All
(In reply to comment #30) > I think it's fairly safe to say that if a user starts navigating after a > search, they're on to different things. As such, I recommend that we follow > this heuristic: > > * After a user searches, the Search Bar shall retain the search terms up until > the user performs a navigation task or switches tabs; if a user opens a new > tab, the search terms will be retained. The fact that the user is interacting with the search results isn't a good indicator that the search term won't be modified anymore, IMHO. And "interacting with the search results" can mean scrolling through the results, but also opening a result in a new tab, switching back to the results page, etc. So if we care about that use case, I don't think that's the right solution.
Assignee: p_ch → dao
Attachment #336147 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Status: REOPENED → ASSIGNED
Attachment #351861 - Flags: ui-review?(beltzner)
Attachment #336147 - Flags: review?(mconnor)
Keywords: polish, privacy
Whiteboard: [polish-easy] [polish-interactive]
Whiteboard: [polish-easy] [polish-interactive] → [polish-easy] [polish-interactive][has patch][needs ui-review beltzner]
Whiteboard: [polish-easy] [polish-interactive][has patch][needs ui-review beltzner] → [polish-easy][polish-interactive][needs ui-review beltzner]
Attachment #351861 - Flags: ui-review?(beltzner) → ui-review?
Attachment #351861 - Flags: ui-review? → ui-review?(faaborg)
Whiteboard: [polish-easy][polish-interactive][needs ui-review beltzner] → [polish-easy][polish-interactive]
Alex, did you miss the ui review?
Whiteboard: [polish-easy][polish-interactive] → [polish-easy][polish-interactive][needs review faaborg]
Sorry about the lag, I agree with Asa, Mconnor and Beltzner in comment 17, comment 19 and comment 30 respectively. Also this bug could be invalidated by combining the search and location bar and introducing additional taskfox/ubiquity functionality.
Attachment #351861 - Flags: ui-review?(faaborg) → ui-review-
Comment on attachment 351861 [details] [diff] [review] clear the text after two minutes and at least 30 seconds idle time A timer isn't the best way to determine if the user is still actively involved in the search. They might for instance be reading a series of research papers that each take 15 minutes, but want to leverage the search term.
Whiteboard: [polish-easy][polish-interactive][needs review faaborg]
Assignee: dao → nobody
Search used to be combined with the urlbar, but then it got it's own searchbox. The point of this was, "Some of us still use the urlbar for search because we don't want everyone seeing what we searched an hour ago". I think the ideas laid out in #19 and #30 are valid, but I don't think they invalidate the idea behind this bug either. I see both being valid needs.
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
I think the search bar should have a different value for each tab: one might want to perform several searches in parallel, or does not want to see the terms from a previous search when browsing something unrelated. With this solution there would be no need for clearing this field after a delay. Moreover, now that Firefox has tabs on top, one expects all the content below the tab bar to depend on the current tab. Having a different search bar value for each tab would make the interface more consistent.
You should consider user privacy as well! Let's supose a user searched words that reflect something very private and personal and these words should not be seen by others. The text remains there. 1- Suppose a curious person pass in front of the computer 1 minute later and the text is still there EVEN if you navigate a different website! Privacy was invaded. 2- Suppose you use PrintScreen to send the screen for other person for professional reasons, or to show something in a website... the words you didn't want to share will be still there, for everyone that receives the image of the screen. You could think of adding different options of search command: 1- (default) search 2- search and clear field (with possibility of saving as a user preference) Remember that all searchs you did are in history, so the excuse of refining the text is invalid, because when you start typing firefox will show you all the searches you did using that text.
Please clear my search history bar for which I shall be grateful for ever. Also any server change can be possible and if so please help me to upgrade my server. rgds
Priority: -- → P4
Whiteboard: [fxsearch]
Rank: 45
If you srsly gonna change this behavior, at least make it optable.
I used an addons for this purpose sinse, probably, FF3. But now, when FF57 no longer supports old addons, I found that this ridiculously obvious bug, which annoys and affect privacy, is open for 14 years!
I've also used add-ons for this for almost as long as I've been using the search bar itself. In Linux it's a functional issue in regards to pasting, but in my case I just find the text sitting there to be an annoying distraction that I may not want people looking over my shoulder to see. There should be an about:config setting to optionally clear the search bar immediately upon searching.
i've also been depending upon an addon to address this, but of course with FF57 that's no longer supported. there's request in bug 248955 to treat each tab as having its own search text, which would certainly be a step in the right direction at least, but it doesn't look like that bug is getting anywhere. my first preference is for the searches to simply clear once entered; if this were made with an option we can toggle, that would be fine with me.
Please revisit this issue now that there is no longer an API which allows add-ons to provide this functionality, and the request to restore it has been denied (as per bug 1418024). Pre-57 this was an essential part of my workflow. I often select terms to copy them and middle-click paste them into the search bar. This allows me to initiate searches using only the mouse with three actions, which is efficient when I am already browsing using only the mouse. In order for this to work the search input field has to be empty. If it is not empty, I have to switch to the keyboard to clear it. I seldom search for the same term sequentially using multiple engines, and if I need to I can re-click in the field to re-paste it. I don't understand the rationale behind *not* clearing the field as the default behaviour. How many people actually use the tiny search box to manipulate the search terms when repeating the search using the same engine? I prefer to use the search form on the website which is launched to perform the search, which is much wider and allows me to see the entirety of a long search term at once. I have tried to switch to a different method of searching, like using the URL bar or an extension which adds a right-click context menu, but these are all unsatisfactory for various reasons. Apart from the usability issue, I agree that this has privacy implications. I don't like having old search terms hanging around in the foreground indefinitely until I explicitly delete them.
After disabling search bar plugins this feature should be prioritized again for users to be able to clear search bar after enter. Now it's P4 but should be implemented now as there are no workaround available. One plugin which implemented this feature was Clear Search 2 which had 881 users according this page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clear-search-2/. There have been also few other plugins with same functinality so I think this would be popular feature for Firefox users.
Severity: normal → S4
Rank: 45
Priority: P4 → P5
Assignee: nobody → dan+moz
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED

Hello,

I am a long time firefox user and first-time contributor.

There is a lot of discussion on this bug (including whether or not it is a bug) and a lot of good points have been brought up.

I have submitted a patch for this issue (visible above), which I hope will be reviewed soon.
The patch I submitted by default does absolutely nothing, but adds an about:config setting called browser.search.autoClear which when set to true causes the behaviour to change to what was originally desired by the reporter of this bug some 18 years ago.
For those of us that want the current behaviour, no action would be required.
For those of us (like myself) that would prefer the search auto-clear, we can set this about:config setting to true and it will behave as we expect.

As far as I'm aware there is no standards-track javascript API that would allow an extension to provide this functionality, so I would not expect it to be something an addon could implement in current versions of firefox.

Please let me know if I should change anything :)

Hi Dan, thank you for offering the patch, I'm sorry for the delay in responding. At this time we've decided not to accept it for a few reasons.

Firstly although it is a hidden pref and doesn't change functionality for most users, we do limit the amount of hidden preferences that we have. They do have maintenance and complexity burdens so we try to keep them to a minimum.

Secondly, we are currently considering what to do with the search bar code - it is based on an old architecture and there are several possibilities as to what we do. As a result, we would prefer not to add more features to it at this stage, but we will review this as part of the plan. Unfortunately I can't say how long it will take to decide at the moment.

Also adding the blocked-ux keyword as we'll want to reconsider this with the user experience team involved.

Keywords: blocked-ux

Hello,

Thank you for your response.

Regarding the fact that it's a hidden setting, I do understand the desire to limit hidden settings and additional maintenance.
I can probably update the patch to add an option in about:preferences#search so it's not "hidden", if that would make a difference.

As far as the search bar code in general, please update this ticket when a decision is made.
I know it's not the new/preferred user interaction, but a lot of users get value from having a dedicated search bar so I hope that whatever is decided there is a search bar available, and that it has an option to auto-clear after a search is performed.

I will not take any further action for now. If this is still an issue once the search bar code is more stable I will take another look at that time.

Thank you for your time,
Dan

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S4. However, the bug has 15 duplicates, 24 votes and 56 CCs.
:dan+moz, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(dan+moz)
Assignee: dan+moz → nobody
Severity: S4 → S3
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Flags: needinfo?(dan+moz)
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