URL Autocomplete

Summary

• Enabling autocomplete inline in the URL entry field makes it easier to enter often-typed URLs, and make our browser feel a lot faster, since the user gets immediate feedback on where we think they will go.
• We stopped “speaking URL” when AwesomeBar came along, and it makes us seem slower when typing a URL. A large portion of people still "speak URLs" when navigating the internet, and we currently do a bad job at accommodating these people.
• We propose to turn on inline autocomplete, with some additional changes that make it stop completion at URL boundaries (e.g. "/").
• This feature is targeted for Firefox 13.

References

• Wiki page

Use Cases

• TBD

Test Cases

• The test cases for this feature can be viewed here.

Important Bugs

• Bug 566489 - Implementation Bug - Enable inline autocomplete again, but make it smarter (perceived performance)

Related Bugs

• Bug 719890 - Pressing "backspace" in the location bar does not delete the last character typed, if inline autocomplete is active [NEW]
• Bug 719888 - Inline autocomplete: Backspace highlights the last character instead of deleting, when first search result is highlighted [NEW]
• Bug 720081 - Inline autocomplete drops https and completes without protocol/www [Resolved Fixed]
• Bug 721225 - getTextValue is not guaranteed to return the same string that was set through setTextValue [NEW]
• Bug 721338 - Typing http://A should preserve user's casing [NEW]
• Bug 722323 - It's difficult to type data URI when inline autocomplete suggests very long data URI [NEW]
• Bug 726835 - Cannot delete inline URL autocomplete entries Unconfirmed
• Bug 739267 - URL bar not catching up with keystrokes NEW
• Bug 739580 - Don't ignore search bar keywords for inline autocomplete NEW
• Bug 739751 - In-the-middle autocomplete unexpectedly appears in urlbar ("searchstring >> full string") [Resolved Fixed]

Not Tested

• TBD

Sign off Criteria

• All the test cases were executed.
• All the major bugs have been fixed.