1. Goal: * As a Firefox Desktop User I want to a visual reminder that Firefox knows I’m doing a search on a certain set of terms. 2. Acceptance Criteria (AC): * A search generated through a Firefox SAP creates a visually different search URL. * A search generated outside of a Firefox SAP creates the same visually different search URL (Bonus). * When a user focuses the URL input the search terms are highlighted and selected. 3. Notes/Supporting Documentation: * Accessing the original URL is still a question for UX

mconnor, is it fine to apply our usual query parameters (from a new search) when the original query was from a non-Firefox SAP?

If a search is through a SAP, we're generally okay, as that's a new search. We can't modify anything in content or from other sources. Before we ship anything we'd want to double-check with legal.

What happens when you focus the field? Black except for the previous search term, highlighted, so you're ready to edit?

Currently in Firefox, the current domain is colored black in the URL bar, and the rest of the URL is in grey. The reason for this emphasis is to make the relevant and readable part of the URL - the domain itself - pop out and be scannable by users. While other parts of the URL may contain useful information, the domain is the most likely to be both 1. readable and 2. relevant, and thus is colored black. However, there's another portion of the URL that can be guaranteed to be human-readable: the user's search string. If a user searches for string "foo" on google.com, the resulting URL will contain at least two human-readable strings: the domain ("google.com") and the search query ("foo"). We should treat the search query identically to domains, making them black and scannable.

(In reply to Madhava Enros [:madhava] from comment #4) > What happens when you focus the field? Black except for the previous search > term, highlighted, so you're ready to edit? That's a good point, and doing so would certainly prompt another search. However, I worry that treating the URL bar inconsistently when clicked would lead to mode errors and inconsistencies. It would mean that sometimes, as currently, clicking the URL would highlight the whole field and make the user ready to type in any string, search query or not. Other times, only part of the URL would be highlighted, requiring a second click to highlight the whole field. The particular concern with highlighting only the query is that we're getting in the way of one of the most important browser functions - 1. click in url bar 2. type string 3. press enter (or use awesomebar).

This bug is the Story bug that is now implementation bug 1034382, so please add discussions and work there