search bar prioritise bookmarks and auto select

[Sitt]

Hello everyone, I'm not sure how common that is, but I have well organized bookmarks. What I'm missing is a easy-to-use bookmark search that allows me to manly use my keyboard.

The Problem right now is, that the bookmarks are at the bottom of the search results in the search bar. Adding an option to prioritize bookmarks would be an easy solution. I'm aware that '*' filters for bookmarks, but I'd still like the option since it would make the workflow a bit smother.

The auto select part, when pressing enter, would save one key press (arrow down) and make the workflow a lot smother (imo).

[Jon]

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[jscher2000]

Hi Sitt, if you have dynamically generated search engine suggestions at the top of your autocomplete panel, you can swap them to the bottom or turn them off completely. There are checkboxes for that on the Settings page, Search panel, below the default search engine setting. But bookmarks will still be mingled with history.

[Standard8]

I think what you want already exists. In preferences, go to the search section and look for "Search Suggestions".

Within that section uncheck  "Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history in address bar results".

This will put history & bookmarks ahead of search suggestions.

[Sitt]

@jscher2000 @Standard8 Thanks, I overlooked the option.

[Sitt]

@jscher2000 @Standard8 Thanks, I must have missed the option

[harrywg]

Yes, definitely.

No matter how clever the search bar logic is (and it's good, but currently often gets it wrong) if the user has taken the trouble to bookmark a page and to tag it with some memorable keystrokes (whether it be a word, a single character or multiple characters) then it's clearly the user intention that when they type those keystrokes in the address bar, then they expect the bookmark with that tag to be presented as the default page.

Other matches can be shown too, but the bookmark that I've specifically and intentionally created with that tag needs to come right at the top of the top of the list. Putting other results before it makes no sense at all. A user would not create a bookmark to the page and tag it if that bookmark wasn't important to the user. And it is unlikely that any other page would ever be more important (to that user) than the one they have specifically chosen to use that tag.

To take a particularly annoying example:

• there's a page I visit several times a day
• firefox, by itself, learned that was an important page to me and after a few weeks started displaying it as default the moment I hit a on the keyboard. Great so far 🙂
• so, I quickly learned I could get to that page fast using a and pressing return. Also great 🙂
• that worked flawlessly for several years until one day it started displaying a different page 😞
• I could see no reason for it. It wasn't a page I had visited often 😞
• Bookmarking my page (which I never needed to do before) did not solve the problem 😞
• Tagging the bookmark with a clearly ought to have indicated my strong preference for that page over all others, but it didn't 😞 😞 😞
• The only way I could stop it was to delete the history for that other page. And then sanity was preserved for a few months (slight 🙂 )
• It happened a few more times ( 😞 😞 😞 😞 😞 = severe annoyance ) and again the only fix was to delete the history for that page to preserve my sanity (slight 🙂 but it gets tedious to have to do things like that jsut to thwart arrogant programmers that falsely think they know better than the user  ( 😞 😞 😞 😞 😞 = severe annoyance )

Today though it's happened again:

• the page I want shows a visit count of 4111
• the incorrect page being displayed in its place shows a visit count of 266
• unlike the previous occasions, the "incorrect" page is one that I do also need to visit frequently, but much less often (as the visit count proves)
• it doesn't have a bookmark so is clearly less important to me than the page that a has usually displayed
• But this time I can't delete the history for the page that keeps coming up first, because I do need that page frequently too.
• Typing *a instead of just a is two keystrokes -- but more to the point, it's difficult (and should not be necessary) to break a two year habilt of getting there with a on its own.

An option to search bookmark tags first would completely solve that problem. And after a while, it could probably become the default firefox behaviour -- because

• anybody who creates bookmarks and tags them would obviously want the option to be on
• anybody who doesn't create bookmarks and tag them wouldn't care whether the option is on or off

[harrywg]

@jscher2000@Standard8 

In my example at least, the offending pages are not Search Suggestions. They are history items with lower visit counts that have been incorrectly ordered above the wanted history item with a far greater visit count.

[Bananenbiz]

I agree, or at least make it a preference that you can choose if you want to prioritize bookmarks always.

About the asterisk thing:

what I don't get is that when there are multiple entries for a bookmark search like '* patents' (which comes up with quite some bookmarks at my side) the autoselect function is STILL focused on the normal search. So you will still have to actively use the arrow down key to select one of your bookmarks, otherwise it will just search for the word 'patents' on google (or any other search engine you have set it to).

It could also just set the autofocus on the first entry. Because I believe Firefox will automatically put the bookmarks that you visited most recently on top of the list. Anyways, if all the bookmarks suggestions are 'wrong' the user could always press backspace, erase the '* + search term' and continue to do a normal search.