AwesomeBar HD: Find what you want

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Edward Lee

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Apr 27, 2011, 2:10:14 PM4/27/11
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Thanks for all the great feedback with Home Dash so far. The
Prospector team has spun off an experiment to focus on combining the
location and search bar.

Check out the video in the post, and leave feedback here!
https://mozillalabs.com/prospector/2011/04/27/awesomebar-hd-find-what-you-want/

Ed

Matthew Wilkinson

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Apr 27, 2011, 4:19:05 PM4/27/11
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Excellent ideas here for the next generation of the Awesomebar. However, one thing I've noticed right off the bat is that there is not URL in the awesomebar. This is troublesome because if I need to copy and paste the URL of the page I'm currently on, I can't do it.

Other than that I'm pretty impressed and I especially like how Mozilla (as usual) is focused on user privacy and security.

Thanks.

matt
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JT Perry

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Apr 27, 2011, 4:41:45 PM4/27/11
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Just a +1 here.  Same issue with no URL.  But great ideas and implementation so far.

Edward Lee

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Apr 27, 2011, 4:46:21 PM4/27/11
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On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 1:40 PM, JT Perry <jt.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Would like to copy URL to send to someone but URL is not displayed
There's no obvious way right now, but to quickly copy the URL, just
hit Ctrl-L then Ctrl-C. (First to have the url get filled in, then to
copy.)

Ed

Paul Morris

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Apr 27, 2011, 5:04:44 PM4/27/11
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+1  on missing the URL.  Seems this would also be important for avoiding phishing sites?  Glad to know the keyboard shortcut to make it appear. 

Other than that, nice work, this looks like a great start! 

Paul Morris

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Apr 27, 2011, 6:31:33 PM4/27/11
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I've noticed what appears to be a bug.  After using it awhile on my mac, the menus (File, Edit, View, etc) can become unresponsive when you click them.  Disabling the add-on sometimes fixes it, but it's not consistent.  Restarting Firefox seems to temporarily fix the problem.  


Edward Lee

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Apr 27, 2011, 6:38:44 PM4/27/11
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On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Paul Morris <paulw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems this would also be important for avoiding phishing sites?
There was a bug in v1 where the identity block would not correctly
show up. This has been fixed in v2 in addition to showing part of the
current page's url.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/prospector-awesomeBar-HD/versions/#version-2

Ed

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Mike Hanson

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Apr 27, 2011, 7:28:14 PM4/27/11
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I've observed that same problem on my Mac, Paul.

m

On Apr 27, 2011, at 3:31 PM, Paul Morris wrote:

> I've noticed what appears to be a bug. After using it awhile on my mac, the menus (File, Edit, View, etc) can become unresponsive when you click them. Disabling the add-on sometimes fixes it, but it's not consistent. Restarting Firefox seems to temporarily fix the problem.
>
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Edward Lee

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Apr 27, 2011, 7:44:58 PM4/27/11
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On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Paul Morris <paulw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> menus (File, Edit, View, etc) can become unresponsive when you click them.
I too have noticed this, but only when I have DOM Inspector open, so I
wasn't sure if the problem was only happening because I was inspecting
stuff.

Do you use multiple windows? And perhaps DOM Inspector or the Error
Console? I've opened an issue for people to leave comments:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/245

Ed

Paul Morris

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Apr 27, 2011, 8:44:28 PM4/27/11
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> Do you use multiple windows? And perhaps DOM Inspector or the Error Console?

I do have two FF windows open, but I don't use the DOM Inspector or Error Console. 


(Glad to see the partial URLs shown in version 2, with click to see and edit the whole URL.)

Brian Gilbert

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Apr 27, 2011, 9:17:58 PM4/27/11
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Is it possible to allow us to select parts of the url for copy and
paste? v2 currently only allows you to select the whole URL

Captain Calliope

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Apr 28, 2011, 12:03:55 AM4/28/11
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I like. Feedback time!

Rather than typing 'search' or using the mouse, I instinctively want to just type a search term and then tab to the appropriate type of search.

So, I'd like for the tab button to cycle through the different search options.

You know what would be even more awesome? If the search categories reordered themselves based on historical search behavior AND syntax. So if I start typing an address, firefox automatically selects the maps option without me having to press tab. If I'm constantly searching for definitions, dictionary.com(References) will slowly creep to the left of the Awesome bar over time.

And if there was an api to extend the smart capabilities of the search clicky / tab thing... actually, this is starting to remind me of Ubiquity a little now...

Don't mind me, carry on.
-CC

Paul Morris

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Apr 28, 2011, 1:33:42 AM4/28/11
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After using it some more, I have a suggestion FWIW... 

I think I'd rather the drop down menus (for books, food, etc) appear with a click rather than a mouse hover.  Since the AwesomeBar is right below the tab strip, the cursor is always going back and forth across it to click tabs, causing the menus to keep popping up all the time when they're not wanted, which can be distracting.  Also many websites have links at the top of the page, and I find that when I overshoot them, a menu drops down and covers the link that I wanted to click, which is frustrating.  (Also, minor point, but for touch-screens, as with mobile FF, there's no mouse hover, so for greater consistency there it maybe better to avoid hover?) 

Also I like this idea from Captain Calliope:


> I'd like for the tab button to cycle through the different search options.

I notice that hitting tab currently inserts "search:" -- this is a really nice touch!  Hitting tab again cycles through the different search engines.  Maybe if tab cycled through the different categories, then option+tab (or other combination?) could cycle through the options within each category?  Presumably you'd set your favorite option for each category and not change it as much as you would select between different categories?

Final thought, I like keeping a consistent, unchanging order for the categories to make them easier to locate (instead of FF reordering the categories for me based on my use).  That said, being able to define one's own custom order would be nice, at some later point, of course.

Again, nice work on this!

Daniel Palmér

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Apr 28, 2011, 6:07:24 AM4/28/11
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I also find it troublesome that the URL doesn't show in the awesomebar. Also I had some problems with clicking and editing the URL in the awesomebar. It seems impossible to select just parts of the URL.

Like Paul Morris says, the hover function makes the menus to appear when they are not wanted.
And I would very much like to perform the actions without having to switch between keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

Furthermore, I feel like the topics take to much space in the awesomebar, and there are topics I could manage without. Maybe let me remove the ones I'm not interested in for the moment?
Usually I make use of customized keyword searches in the awesomebar (Like, typing "imdb lola rennt" in the awesomebar will get me an instant imdb search for "Lola rennt"). My problem is to remember all the keywords I set for the different searches. Could I perhaps add these customized searches as topics in the Awesomebar HD?

Interesting work! I think it'll turn out really nice.

crazedpsyc

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Apr 28, 2011, 9:50:07 AM4/28/11
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The web category needs to use search plugins (so people can use search
engines other than google and yahoo, like duckduckgo), and the
categories also need to be disableable, because there are way too many
and I will never use most of them.
Finally, the categories need to hide when I don't want them, so maybe
they should hide after five seconds or so of the location bar not
being focused
Other than that, its looking pretty good!

pd

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Apr 28, 2011, 12:37:25 PM4/28/11
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I hate it.

It's non-intuitive, it obfuscates URLs by default, it is just a poor because essentially is is based on a false premise: that the search box is a problem and that it should be removed. Why? The search box is fundamentally a tool that has a specific, obvious function that works exactly how people expect it to work. You think that's a bad thing? Geez, must have too much time on your hands.

Whatever happened to Ubiquity? The next generation of the search bar should be based on typing and typing alone. The only negative of having the search and location bars separate for me is, having to switch b/w keyboard and mouse to activate either one. Whilst there is shortcut keys to do this, who ever remembers them? My unfortunate instinct is still to click into the search box 60% of the time, though I'm trying to retrain myself. Advancing the awesome bar, if necessary, should focus on one input method only and that has to be keyboard. No matter how much you might all fantasize about non-keyboard input in some sci-fi minority report, voice recognition world, keyboard is and will be fundamental. Advancing the awesome bar should focus on keyboard entry alone and should be based on keyword hints similar to suggestive search extensions. The first word should be used to determine the user's intent and hints should be loaded when the user hits the space bar as this means they are not going to type in a domain and the hints should be a small list of related words or names presented inline after the first word. As the user keeps typing, if the text matches a hint word, the user should be able to tab-complete that word and keep going. Whilst doing this keyword prediction/suggestion/hinting, the usual awesomebar drop-down will display history and boookmark results matching the user's text thus far. If the user's text does not match one of the initial keyword suggestions then the matching will revert to awesomebar history/bookmarking search.

Some examples:

1.

INPUT [search ]

OUTPUT: search <google> <yahoo> <bing>

INPUT: [search go] <google> [tab]

OUTPUT: search google

INPUT: [search go tab] [random topic] <web> <images> <video>

OUTPUT: search google random topic

INPUT: [search go tab] [random topic] [enter]

OUTPUT: default google site opens a search for "random topic".
-----
LEGEND: [user typing] <hints> [action key]

Result:

using only the keyboard, the default location bar action of loading a domain has been bypassed with the first keyword and a space character "search " but without the space the default behaviour is still available.

The user has been presented with a series of keyword-related sites, any of which can be chosen so there is no problem with preferential treatment, text-completion has kicked in to save typing and speed is increased rapidly because it is never required move the hand tot he mouse, seek out the tiny go arrow and click it.

I'll do more examples if someone can tell me whether the format of the above example is comprehendible to anyone other than me :) and also, is what I've described simply the way Ubiquity worked (I never did get around to trying it)?

Edward Lee

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Apr 28, 2011, 12:44:26 PM4/28/11
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On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 9:37 AM, pd <an0n...@gmail.com> wrote:
> INPUT: [search go tab] [random topic] <web> <images> <video>
> OUTPUT: search google random topic
Just checking, can you try this with AwesomeBar HD installed:

press ctrl-l (or click in the location bar) then..

s<tab> random topic

Ed

Korkman

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Apr 28, 2011, 8:50:35 PM4/28/11
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Mixed feelings, version 2, too. The URL is such an important part of the website. It does deserve lots of screen space. Also, I tend to doubleclick just somewhere in the bar to start typing, without much aim. I'd say put the search engines into a compact dropdown, maybe with a default selected "Go to", at the rightmost part of the bar. Combine with reload and stop (make those bigger). Takes one click more to search (dropdown, engine). But leaves URL clearly visible and clickable. Use tab to iterate through dropdown elements for a shortcut.

So my favorite workflow would be: doubleclick url to select full line, type, tab, enter for google. Or just enter to go to URL.


Lars Engels

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Apr 29, 2011, 4:13:51 AM4/29/11
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Well, it's quite nice, but I think there is some more space for improvement:

The current URL shown is way too truncated. I'd really like to see more of it. Maybe it can be done like in Chrome where the protocol part (http[s]://) is removed, so more space is available for the domain and path?
Also I'd like to customize the search engines, e.g. I want my default engine to be duckduckgo.com. It would also be nice to remove some of the offered categories? E.g. personally I'd never use a weather search engine. :)
BTW, running Firefox maximized on a 1280x1024 screen there's about 200px of whitespace between the truncated URL and "Go to a website", so please enlarge the URL. :)

Edward Lee

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Apr 29, 2011, 11:39:38 AM4/29/11
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On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 4:26 PM, Brian Gilbert <br...@realityloop.com> wrote:
> Is it possible to allow us to select parts of the url for copy and paste?
Not with the mouse. You can use the keyboard arrow/home/end with shift
to select a portion. (Tip: you can generally select a word at a time
by holding either ctrl or alt [depending on your OS] when pressing
left or right.

There's a number of technical issues that prevent mouse interactions,
so it defaults to selecting all. You can follow along in this issue:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/247

Ed

Edward Lee

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Apr 29, 2011, 11:46:47 AM4/29/11
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On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 9:03 PM, Captain Calliope
<lyre.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rather than typing 'search' or using the mouse, I instinctively want to just
> type a search term and then tab to the appropriate type of search.
Tabbing may be sub-optimal in terms of potentially needing to tab
through many categories. Additionally, if you tab through say,
Amazon.com on the way to what you actually want, Amazon.com might end
up seeing what you've typed because you've activated it. This could be
worked around with some timers, but then that slows things down if you
actually wanted Amazon.com results.

Currently, you can type "search:" at the beginning to activate search.
Potentially that same logic can be applied to detect "search:"
anywhere in the input, so you could type the term and then "search:".

> If the search categories reordered themselves based on historical search behavior

That could work if the visual list of categories wasn't there.
Reordering dynamically seems to work for search results, but having UI
targets automatically move around can be pretty confusing to users.

Ed

Edward Lee

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Apr 29, 2011, 11:51:45 AM4/29/11
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On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 10:33 PM, Paul Morris <paulw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> causing the menus to keep popping up all the time when they're not wanted
One reason for the menus showing on hover is so that you have easy
access to switching providers. Your use case is valid in that your
mouse just happens to pass by the text, and you're not looking for a
list of providers. One possibility is to delay showing the menu by a
little bit.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/258

> Presumably you'd set your favorite option for each category and not change
> it as much as you would select between different categories?

That may be true. We hope to do Test Pilot studies soon to see how
people interact, and if they prefer to change providers or categories.

Ed

Edward Lee

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Apr 29, 2011, 11:56:51 AM4/29/11
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On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 9:37 AM, pd <an0n...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Whatever happened to Ubiquity?
Some people say it's coming back with this add-on! At least some aspects.

Once AwesomeBar HD provides support for adding custom searches as well
as instant previews, you get something that feels very much like
Ubiquity. You can type a command and some words, and you see a results
page update as you type.

One big difference is that this feels more "of the web" in that there
aren't specially written Ubiquity commands. It's a search that hits a
webpage with a query. (And if the site is fancy like Google Translate,
using the URI #fragment avoids refetching whole pages for this instant
preview / live updating behavior.)

Ed

Edward Lee

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Apr 29, 2011, 11:59:41 AM4/29/11
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On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 10:13 AM, David Ascher <das...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> i don't think the on-hover behavior should fire if firefox isn't the focused app
That's a bit odd that it works. But I suppose scrolling also works
when Firefox isn't focused.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/259

Ed

Edward Lee

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Apr 29, 2011, 12:05:01 PM4/29/11
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On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Korkman <goo...@pierre-beck.de> wrote:
> The URL is such an important part of the website.
Curious, what do you want to see in the url? The domain? path? query parameters?

Anything particular reason you want to look at it in the first place?
You're just looking there because it's usually been there? You're
getting ready to edit the url? Seeing if you want to copy to share?

> So my favorite workflow would be: doubleclick url to select full line, type,
> tab, enter for google. Or just enter to go to URL.

Are you saying that works now with AwesomeBar HD or that's what you
would want it to do? Other than you potentially accidentally clicking
a category, those steps you describe work for me. In fact, you can
save a click by not double-clicking.

Ed

Edward Lee

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Apr 29, 2011, 12:14:06 PM4/29/11
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On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 1:13 AM, Lars Engels <laem...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Also I'd like to customize the search engines, e.g. I want my default engine
> to be duckduckgo.com. It would also be nice to remove some of the offered
Removing categories is a bit easier than adding a new one at least in
terms of presenting an interface to the user that supports this. Do
you have any particular suggestions for how to add one?

There's quite a bit of information that Firefox can process from
previous form inputs to pages in your history and opensearch provider
data. Independent of that, there's a bunch of ways to highlight the
ability to add a search provider, e.g., right-click input, decorating
the input, highlighting the search area in the chrome, etc. Throw
categories into the mix and it can get even more complicated.

> please enlarge the URL. :)

https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/250

One tricky aspect of making it dynamically take up more space is to
make sure there's a good minimum amount of information. Right now the
url is always truncated just before the end of .com, .org, .net, etc.
This makes sure you always see "bank.com.evil.c..." and not just
"bank.com...".

Ed

Otto

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Apr 29, 2011, 12:56:46 PM4/29/11
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I've waited for such a plugin, great job. Here's my feedback:
All those categories are far to much and clutter the url bar. I know you want to achieve discoverability, but it should at least be possible to configure the visible categories.
I personally would even remove ALL categories and activate the the special search by shortcuts key, like "tab-ing" through it. Maybe thats too extreme and shouldn't be default, but I'd love the possibility to configure it that way.
I also agree with the other comments that the url is cut off far too short and actually shouldn't be cut at all.

Jordan

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Apr 29, 2011, 1:44:13 PM4/29/11
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Maybe you could also include the option to display the favicons (instead of words, i.e. video, people, weather, etc.)  in a line on the right side of the awesomebar, next to the bookmark star, f1 (if you use it), etc. Each favicon could have a drop-down arrow next to it, so you could either click the favicon (instead of a word) to start searching the default site for that category, or you could click the drop-down arrow next to it to quickly change to another search engine and start searching that one.

This implementation would take up much less space (especially if you could customize by taking out ones you don't need) and would allow more space for the URL to display.

I would also like to see search suggestions (like you see in the current, separate search box) when doing a Google search...

Korkman

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Apr 29, 2011, 1:51:04 PM4/29/11
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In my own habit, when moving parts of the interface around, I try to keep the URL untruncated, or as long as possible. Domain and SSL status are probably the most important parts to hilight to give credit to the certified folks. The anchor # is the next most important part (I have to remove it many times a week to force page load without pressing reload, which would reload all images as well). Then queries, then path.

So if you really have to truncate, go for the path first. But try to keep URL as visible as possible. After all, it's where I am.

Another reason to have long URL field is a behaviour of mine I tried to explain: I double-click the URL text to select it all, then start typing to navigate elsewhere. Don't know how many people do this, though. Yes that works with AHD (one click less), but I have to aim carefully for the URL part. Just like you said I'd hit category links accidentially.

What I'd like to see in Awesomebar would be a dropdown for search engines, just like the default one. Having multiple dropdowns like Awesomebar HD has right now eats up too much space. Right now it has many categories as I have search engines. Perhaps things would be much better if it just weren't so many.

Vasilj Milosevic

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Apr 29, 2011, 1:58:14 PM4/29/11
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It's nice, but I think that it would be more user friendly if we could click on field and edit the current address, and not having the blank field on first click. Also it would be great if we could eliminate some of the searches. So it could be more customizable. But all in all, it's great feature. I think that with such changes it could be part of the FF itself in some future versions.

Korkman

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Apr 29, 2011, 2:12:05 PM4/29/11
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How about displaying the categories as columns below the URL after user starts typing / clicked the URL?

URL: [ mozilla addons .................................................... ]
     |                                                                     |
     | search the web    books         ...                                 |
     | Google            Amazon ...    ...                                 |
     | Bing              Barnes ...    ...                                 |
     | Yahoo             Google ...    ...                                 |
     |                                                        Edit search  |
     |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
     | open tabs, visited pages, etc. as usual ....                        |

You could add UI elements like X buttons to delete / hide an engine (another button "show all") as well in this place.

Rumos Mok

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Apr 30, 2011, 9:53:09 AM4/30/11
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That's a pretty good idea.
But it has so few options, at least it should let me choose which search engine to use (just like the old Search Bar)

Paul Morris

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Apr 30, 2011, 12:44:57 PM4/30/11
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It's really nice that you don't have to type out the whole word "search" etc, but can just use a single letter like "s:"   If you changed "pictures" to "images" then it would be possible to use the single letter p for people and i for images.  This would also match up to "Google Images" and "Bing Images" which currently don't match "Pictures." 

+1 for the option to remove or combine some of these categories into a single menu.  I think I would mostly use the keyboard shortcuts, and want to see more of the URL.
+1 for showing as much of the URL as you can, as much as space allows. 

Good idea to add a delay on the hover -> menu, although I'd still prefer click.  I think with click they would still be discoverable, since the words turn into blue links on hover, so it's clear to click them, and voila -- discovered.  (Maybe hover/click could be a preference option?)

cpupro

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May 1, 2011, 2:13:49 PM5/1/11
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I love the concept, just a few recommendations...

  1. I have a larger screen and I have a ton of URL real estate, most unused.  The URL should extend to almost the beginning of the "Go to a website..." section.
  2. I would also like to see the ability to add other searches to each category.
Above these possible recommendations, I love it!

cpupro

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May 1, 2011, 2:14:45 PM5/1/11
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Agree! :D

Martin Aspeli

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May 1, 2011, 9:00:39 PM5/1/11
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Hi,

This is pretty cool - definitely the right direction.

Two immediate annoyances, though:

1) I don't want to see movies, music, news, etc. How can I get more space for the URL and fewer options?

2) I very often do this, which doesn't work anymore with AwesomeBar HD:

a) Start typing pypi
b) Use down arrow to highlight http://pypi.python.org/pypi/some.package
c) Use right arrow to move cursor to the end of that url
d) Use shift+left arrow to highlight some.package
e) Replace with some other package name
f) Press enter

I can't do this anymore, except by loading the previous URL in step b first, which kind of defeats the point.

Martin

Ethan Sisson

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May 3, 2011, 10:53:03 AM5/3/11
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I think this is the right direction. I'm enjoying it so far. It is similar to what I have been doing for years with search engine/bookmark keywords (set up so I can type "g unicorns" into the location bar to search for unicorns).

I personally don't want any of the text added to the location bar since I want to see the current page's URL and link previews (via Status-4-Evar), and I exclusively use the keyboard for navigating and searching. I know that my way isn't typical among the general population, but some customization would be nice (namely, ability to turn off all the mouse-nav UI in the location bar).

Unfortunately I can't use it until I can get rid of all that stuff. I think the future of this experiment is promising.

Ethan Sisson

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May 3, 2011, 11:03:47 AM5/3/11
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I did also want to mention that I love that the favicon changes depending on what command you've activated (books, movies, search, etc.). On the other hand, while all of this functionality is great, the mental model is a mess. I have a hard time accepting that these new navigation tools invade the location bar even when I'm not trying to navigate. Most of the time I want to use the location bar for doing stuff with the current page (bookmark, look at identity info, refresh, etc.). Navigating is a different mode. It's not so much that I never want to see the labels (Go to a website, search the web, books, food, maps, movies, etc.), but that I only want to see them when I'm navigating (and then not necessarily all the time).

So I don't think the solution is to get rid of some of the mouse UI, but rather to make AwesomeBar HD more expressly modal. Make a clear modal distinction between tools for the current page (bookmark, identity, location services, etc.) and tools for navigating to another place. Otherwise I can't see myself wanting this.

Thanks for the great work. Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

Edward Lee

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May 3, 2011, 11:26:24 AM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Ethan Sisson
On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:03 AM, Ethan Sisson <eth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> rather to make AwesomeBar HD more expressly modal. Make a clear modal
> distinction between tools for the current page (bookmark, identity, location
> services, etc.) and tools for navigating to another place.
Thanks for the suggestion! We'll try this out for the next version.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/278

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 3, 2011, 11:46:34 AM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, cpupro
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 11:13 AM, cpupro <david...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The URL should extend to almost the beginning of the "Go to a website..."
v3 made the domain completely visible and darker colored (as opposed
to v2 which showed almost all of the domain) as well as extending the
path to the first visible category. But this is likely to change in v4
soon..

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 3, 2011, 11:48:16 AM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Vasilj Milosevic
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Vasilj Milosevic <ebo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> not having the blank field on first click
It should only be blank if you click in a blank area. If you click on
the url, it'll fill in with the url. v3 makes the url take up more
space in the location bar if you have a wider screen, so it should be
easier to click on the url part.

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 3, 2011, 11:50:48 AM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Otto
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Otto <ottovonw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I personally would even remove ALL categories and activate the the special
> search by shortcuts key, like "tab-ing" through it.
That's actually more viable now that v3 shows a little panel
indicating what pressing tab will activate.

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 3, 2011, 5:00:53 PM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Korkman
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Korkman <goo...@pierre-beck.de> wrote:
> Domain and SSL status are probably the most important parts to highlight
With v4, the protocol is actually hidden, but for https sites, it'll
show the identity block as blue or green with EV certs. As in v3, the
domain will be darker colored than the rest of the path.

> Just like you said I'd hit category links accidentially.

v4 hides the categories by default giving the whole space to the url,
so it's easy to click anywhere in the location bar without needing to
worry about accidentally clicking them.

Ed

peyaz

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May 3, 2011, 5:51:38 PM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
AwesomeBar HD 4 is much better in terms of UI : I love that the "go to a website" has disappeared from the location bar, and that "search for, books, images.." etc. only appears when you need it (i.e when you press tab).
Definitely heading into the right direction ! Thanks !

David Ascher

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May 3, 2011, 6:03:33 PM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
In v4, I like the fact that the URL is visible until I click in the text
field. Unfortunately, the mousedown or hover or is captured by the
popup, so even though I'm just intending to change focus, I end up
causing a popup (often for a category that's behind the text that I just
clicked in).

I suspect just a preventDefault() or stopPropagation() somewhere will
help alleviate that =)

--da

Korkman

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May 3, 2011, 6:13:33 PM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Korkman
v4 is indeed much better!

the "press tab" hint is a nice idea. you may want to make it more elaborative and contain the currently selected search option.

like "you are visiting an URL. press tab to search the web with [G] Google"
then "you are searching the web with [G] Google. press tab to search books with [A] Amazon. press shift-tab to visit an URL."

there's much space along the bar.

some bugs you probably already know about (I'll just dump them here):
  • "press tab" hint steals focus on linux (using gnome3 shell here), rendering bar unusable
  • clicking white space in bar clears current URL instead of select-all when you click current URL text
  • can't click to place cursor in auto-selected URL for editing

hsp

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May 3, 2011, 6:55:29 PM5/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Korkman


Am Mittwoch, 4. Mai 2011 00:13:33 UTC+2 schrieb Korkman:
v4 is indeed much better!
Agreed!
 
some bugs you probably already know about (I'll just dump them here):
  • "press tab" hint steals focus on linux (using gnome3 shell here), rendering bar unusable
Same problem with Gnome 2.32:
Neither Ctrl+L nor clicking inside the bar let you type into the address field. Same with Ctrl+k or Ctrl+w.
The box containing the hint seems to consume all keyboard input and is not even visible most of the time.
 
What actually works for me:
1. Open new tab (Firefox window itself becomes inactive and loses focus, hint is invisible)
2. Click  search  options (food, maps etc) inside AwsomeBar HD (hint becomes visible)
3. Click inside AB HD to enter something (Firefox window becomes active window)


Edward Lee

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May 4, 2011, 5:25:58 PM5/4/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Paul Morris
On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Paul Morris <paulw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Good idea to add a delay on the hover -> menu
This should be fixed in v5:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/258

For now it'll show the menu after pointing at the link for a little
bit. A different implementation that wasn't committed would constantly
delay the menu each time the mouse moved, but that ran into some user
timing issues as the user is likely to slow down the cursor ready to
click, but because there was always a fixed delay from the last
movement, the menu wouldn't have been ready.

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 4, 2011, 5:27:26 PM5/4/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, David Ascher
On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 3:03 PM, David Ascher <das...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> so even though I'm just intending to change focus, I end up causing a popup
> (often for a category that's behind the text that I just clicked in).
This should also be fixed by the related menu hover issue in v5:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/258

Now the menu only opens after moving the mouse, so if the mouse cursor
is still when clicking, it won't immediately cause the popup to open.

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 4, 2011, 5:29:30 PM5/4/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Martin Aspeli
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Martin Aspeli <opti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> a) Start typing pypi
> b) Use down arrow to highlight http://pypi.python.org/pypi/some.package
> c) Use right arrow to move cursor to the end of that url
Thanks for reporting in! This should now work in v5:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/268

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 4, 2011, 5:33:05 PM5/4/11
to David Ascher, mozill...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 10:13 AM, David Ascher <das...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> i don't think the on-hover behavior should fire if firefox isn't the focused app.
This should be less of an issue now that the categories are hidden
unless navigating, but this is also fixed in v5:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/259

At one point I had some crazy inactiveness detection hack...

document.styleSheets[0].insertRule("#urlbar:-moz-window-inactive {
-moz-column-gap: 0 }", 10);
function isInactive() window.getComputedStyle(gURLBar).MozColumnGap[0] == "0";

Ed

Captain Calliope

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May 5, 2011, 12:40:14 AM5/5/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com

Most of the time I want to use the location bar for doing stuff with the current page (bookmark, look at identity info, refresh, etc.). Navigating is a different mode. It's not so much that I never want to see the labels (Go to a website, search the web, books, food, maps, movies, etc.), but that I only want to see them when I'm navigating (and then not necessarily all the time).
 
So I don't think the solution is to get rid of some of the mouse UI, but rather to make AwesomeBar HD more expressly modal. Make a clear modal distinction between tools for the current page (bookmark, identity, location services, etc.) and tools for navigating to another place.

This makes me think about browser based search UI in a whole new way. Rather then popups, perhaps all the action should be in the dropdown. While the current dropdown only appears once you start typing, why not have extra ui exposed at the top of the dropdown as soon as the awesomebar is selected? It could be a line across the top, or perhaps even a sidebar within the awesomebar dropdown that let's you define the search agent and/or further filter your search. Larger icons could be used as you tab through the options for easier identification.

Ooooh, or maybe a coverflow kinda thing!

...too much?

Paul Morris

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May 5, 2011, 1:52:25 PM5/5/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
On Thursday, May 5, 2011 12:40:14 AM UTC-4, Captain Calliope wrote:

perhaps all the action should be in the dropdown. While the current dropdown only appears once you start typing, why not have extra ui exposed at the top of the dropdown as soon as the awesomebar is selected? It could be a line across the top,

I like this idea.  It would also solve the problem of the categories being covered up by longer urls when you click on longer urls. 

Korkman

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May 5, 2011, 6:50:50 PM5/5/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
I repeat my suggestion to put the search categories as colums into the dropdown :-)


URL: [ mozilla addons .................................................... ]
     |                                                                     |
     | search the web    books         ...                                 |
     | Google            Amazon ...    ...                                 |
     | Bing              Barnes ...    ...                                 |
     | Yahoo             Google ...    ...                                 |
     |                                                        Edit search  |
     |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
     | open tabs, visited pages, etc. as usual ....                        |


2-dimensional space is soo much larger than one dimension ...

Edward Lee

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May 6, 2011, 12:32:27 PM5/6/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Captain Calliope
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Captain Calliope
<lyre.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> extra ui exposed at the top of the dropdown as soon as the awesomebar is selected
With the categories now only showing up when you select the location
bar, this feels very much like the original Home Dash flow. In Home
Dash, when you want to navigate somewhere either by opening a new tab
or changing the location, you would get the full screen overlay to
help pick out where you want to go.

Putting the ui in the drop down moves things closer to a "home tab or
new tab page" that focuses on navigation, except as a drop-down,
perhaps it'll feels less like you're getting rid of the current page
as you can still see the page behind the drop down.

This is also somewhat similar to earlier Fennec designs where there
was a list of search engines near the bottom of the list. One benefit
of being a touch interface is that placement of items is less of an
issue. Moving your finger to the first item in the list vs somewhere
further down is fairly similar. However on the desktop, there's both
keyboard navigation and mouse, so laying out a dropdown is somewhat
trickier.

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 6, 2011, 12:34:41 PM5/6/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Paul Morris
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Paul Morris <paulw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> would also solve the problem of the categories being covered up by longer urls
This could separately be solved by just not showing categories when
you have a url selected. So only if you end up with an empty input box
(opening a new tab or clicking in the whitespace behind the url) would
the categories appear.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/298

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 6, 2011, 12:40:06 PM5/6/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Korkman
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Korkman <goo...@pierre-beck.de> wrote:
> I repeat my suggestion to put the search categories as colums into the
> dropdown :-)
>      | search the web    books         ...                                 |
>      | Google            Amazon ...    ...                                 |
Your sketch seems to list the categories across horizontally as it
does now but puts them all in the dropdown. The current design is
already a bit too wide for some users and the width of the categories
is only determined by the category name/label. Add in the provider's
name and it gets very wide very fast. Also, in the future when users
can customize the list of providers, some lists might be much longer
than others.

Additionally, how would users select a particular provider by
keyboard? It seems like one would need to move down and across
although some shortcutting could be done with tab completion. But it
seems like it would also break the simple navigation to frequently
visited pages, e.g., "type n, press down, hit enter".

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 6, 2011, 12:47:00 PM5/6/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Jordan
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Jordan <jscul...@gmail.com> wrote:
> option to display the favicons (instead of words, i.e. video, people)
Early on we've toyed with showing various icons at different points of
user interaction. This was partially to help users figure out what
category to look for what, e.g., wikipedia under references. Switching
all the text to icons would help out with some discovery while keepign
the same interaction of showing a list of alternate providers.
However, if you have say, Google, for a bunch of categories like web
search, books, food, maps, etc.) it's hard to know which one to click.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/299

> I would also like to see search suggestions
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/276

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 6, 2011, 12:54:18 PM5/6/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Korkman
On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Korkman <goo...@pierre-beck.de> wrote:
> then "you are searching the web with [G] Google. press tab to search books
> with [A] Amazon. press shift-tab to visit an URL."
A more descriptive bubble could be useful when first using the
feature. We're looking into ways of not annoying everyone that has
already figured out how to use it though.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/300

> clicking white space in bar clears current URL instead of select-all

This is by design for people that are used to clicking the search bar
near the top-right of Firefox. There's now empty space to click that
functions similarly to the old pattern.

> can't click to place cursor in auto-selected URL for editing

This is partially because the location bar right now looks like a
normal input box but is actually a bunch of separate text labels
placed together to get categories clickable.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/247

Ed

Captain Calliope

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May 6, 2011, 1:28:04 PM5/6/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Captain Calliope
Interesting how ideas from all these different projects keep circling around one another. That usually tells me we're on to something. ;)

Korkman

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May 7, 2011, 11:20:11 AM5/7/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Korkman
Yes, the columns would be rather wide, but the dropdown is below the url bar, so can be just as wide as the bar, which is much more space than bar minus URL. I guess most provider names would fit in easily, but a max width would have to be specified where provider names are cut off.

There's always the extreme short bar situation when a user shrinks the whole window, but I don't think we can display any search shortcuts below a certain width at all.

As for keyboard navigation, here's what I'd expect:

Up / Down selects and skips the whole block as one entry in the dropdown. If no use can be found for selecting the block and pressing enter (like what, search *all* of them?), always skip the block on up / down. This preserves original behaviour and keeps it in line with most other auto-complete dropdowns in the world.

Tab / Shift-Tab walks through the engines like a list of links, with a sensible hilight of the selected one. I'd walk left to right, line by line (for ltr languages). This mimics the default for e.g. a website with a list of links, so I'd expect that here, too.


Edward Lee

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May 9, 2011, 7:54:03 PM5/9/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, hsp, Korkman
On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 3:55 PM, hsp <hendrik...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> "press tab" hint steals focus on linux (using gnome3 shell here),
> Same problem with Gnome 2.32:
Thanks for reporting this! It sounds like it got even worse in a
recent release as it tries to show then hide causing lots of focus and
blur events.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/321

Felix on AMO posted a video that helped me see what was going on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjDFBcb7g4

Ed

Jithin Emmanuel

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May 10, 2011, 1:32:52 AM5/10/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
I like awesomebar HD but there is one major annoyance when typing large url's. In my work place I have to deal with large urls, and what is happening is both the url  and search filter text gets written on top of each other and text displayed in illegible.

Patrick W.

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May 11, 2011, 1:59:32 AM5/11/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
I don’t like this at all. Out of the 14 default search options, I’m actually interested in only 5. In addition to the 5 that are included, I usually have ~10-15 other search providers I use very often. There seems to be no way to remove search options (and categories), and more importantly to add custom search providers. The latter is very crucial to me.

Also in my typical workflow, I’m using the search providers a lot (you can probably guess from the number of providers I have). I usually press CTRL+K, then CTRL+Up/Down to quickly navigate to the provider I’m looking for. As of now, CTRL+K just redirects me to google, which is very bad for me, as google is not one of the search providers, I use the most time. I actually prefer the hard split between location bar, and search bar.

Thank you.

Patrick


Nicola D'Agostino

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May 11, 2011, 9:24:55 AM5/11/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com

If I may I'd like to point out that there's a usability problem at smaller window sizes:

-- 

Nicola D'Agostino

<http://www.nicoladagostino.net>


Edward Lee

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May 14, 2011, 12:53:54 AM5/14/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Jithin Emmanuel
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 10:32 PM, Jithin Emmanuel <jithi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to deal with large urls, and what is happening is both the url  and search
> filter text gets written on top of each other and text displayed in illegible.
Do you remember what version you were using? The recent versions
should hide the category text when you're typing a url (or if you're
editing the current page's url or selected a url from the
autocomplete).

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 14, 2011, 1:04:57 AM5/14/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Patrick W.
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:59 PM, Patrick W.
<patrickw...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I don’t like this at all. Out of the 14 default search options, I’m actually
> interested in only 5.
In v10, you can now hide categories from the menu under the category.
You can restore it by activating the category with the keyboard and
reshowing the category if you want.

> I usually have ~10-15 other search providers I use very often

Would you be okay if those search providers appeared under the first
category? Perhaps later on when there's more customization, engines
could be moved? We're tracking this issue here:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/248

> I usually press CTRL+K, then CTRL+Up/Down to quickly navigate to the provider

Starting from v7, you can also switch providers like the searchbar to
change within a provider. So if search the web had your other search
engines, you could switch just like the original searchbar.

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 14, 2011, 1:19:08 AM5/14/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Nicola D'Agostino
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 6:24 AM, Nicola D'Agostino <nez...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to point out that there's a usability problem at smaller window sizes
In v10, you can switch a category to an icon to save on some space.
You can also hide categories completely. Most likely there would be
fewer categories to take up space, so it would be less of an issue. In
the mean time, the category view could be smarter to hide when it
starts overlapping.
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/334

Ed

Jithin Emmanuel

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May 14, 2011, 6:39:28 AM5/14/11
to Edward Lee, mozill...@googlegroups.com
Thanks the recent version(10) have indeed fixed this.
--
Thanks
Jithin Emmanuel

Jithin Emmanuel

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May 16, 2011, 10:29:29 AM5/16/11
to Edward Lee, mozill...@googlegroups.com
An issue with AwesomeBar HD v10. On doing webserch and other searches its opening in another new tab instead of the new tab I opened.
--
Thanks
Jithin Emmanuel

Edward Lee

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May 18, 2011, 4:03:40 AM5/18/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Nicola D'Agostino
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 6:24 AM, Nicola D'Agostino <nez...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/nda/5709269129
Nicola, can you try v12 and report back if the overlapping text issue
is fixed for your screen size?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/prospector-awesomeBar-HD/versions/12

Ed

Nicola D'Agostino

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May 18, 2011, 6:50:11 AM5/18/11
to mozilla-labs
> is fixed for your screen size?https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/prospector-awesomeBar-...

I've upgraded to v12 (actually disabled and installed anew) and it
fixed the issue.

Now the url bar with the AwesomeBar HD installed has NO overlapping
text, even at low sizes/resolutions. The fixed leading space you added
between the favicon and "search" and the words for the contextual
searches helps _a lot_, thanks! :)

p.s. it also looks like v12 fixed the inability to select menus while
a navigation window was open.

--
Nicola D'Agostino
www.nicoladagostino.net

André

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May 18, 2011, 10:02:51 AM5/18/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
Every link I navigate to after searching using the awesome bar doesn't update the address bar.. it is fantastic to get context of what search originated current page, however information on where you are now is lost

Jithin Emmanuel

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May 18, 2011, 11:00:51 AM5/18/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
with v12 once the space in urlbar is over its not scrolling over to the remaining text. This makes this completely unsuable with large urls.

Edward Lee

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May 18, 2011, 11:49:36 AM5/18/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, André
On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:02 AM, André <afsver...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Every link I navigate to after searching using the awesome bar doesn't
> update the address bar
The location bar will show the search for at least 10 seconds and
afterwards, if you navigate to another page, the new page's url will
appear. Additionally, the add-on remembers what you've typed into
other tabs, but if you haven't used that tab for a while, it'll clear
it out and move focus back to the page.

Curious, how often do you want the url of the search result page?

Ed

Edward Lee

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May 18, 2011, 11:52:09 AM5/18/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, Jithin Emmanuel
On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Jithin Emmanuel <jithi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> once the space in urlbar is over its not scrolling over to the remaining text
Thanks for pointing this out. I've filed an issue:
https://github.com/mozilla/prospector/issues/344

I tried some immediate changes, but doesn't seem to be a trivial fix
for some reason.

Ed

André

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May 18, 2011, 12:18:06 PM5/18/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com, André
Actually it never disappears, I'm searching using the google provider for "yada", enter the wikipedia article and the locationbar still presents "search: yada"

Additionally, if i press Ctrl+K it highlights the "search:" portion of what is in the bar instead of the actual search terms

(the location bar is updated only if I click on a link 10 seconds after the search is performed)

And to answer your question I don't need the url information of the search page, but when I click on the location bar I expect to find the url of the current page... I need to hit twice on escape to get to that

One last suggestion... if the current navigation resulted from a search query, I would like to keep it while navigating through the results, always having the possibility to return to the search results (right now I use an open tab with nothing but the results and open the links in other tabs)... this could eventually adapt the search terms as the user refines the search, but that would require advanced url srapping.

just a thought that originated from this situation :)

ps. i'm using nightly 6.0a (2011-05-17) which could be the cause of this

Ryan O'Shea

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May 18, 2011, 7:49:46 PM5/18/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
Great add-on, especially great work on the privacy front. I'll second the issues relating to the URL not being in the Awesomebar after a search, and the need for the bar to recognize search engines in addition to categories. The prefetching is nice, ut i've encountered a problem. Sending so many search requests to Google search looks to them as suspicious/robot activity, prompting me to enter a captcha every few searches to prove I'm human.

Jithin Emmanuel

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Jun 3, 2011, 6:37:16 AM6/3/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
All searches are opening on new tab. Can this setting be controlled.? This is very annoying and results in multiple tabs opened.

C.Zub

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Jun 4, 2011, 2:10:05 PM6/4/11
to mozill...@googlegroups.com
I'm gonna take a guess and say that the URL problem is universal.
Anyways, I have one suggestion. I like using icons instead of text, but it is of no help when google has the same icon across all categories. Could you make a category icon, and put the provider icon inside... it is just confusing having so many colorful hollow g's. Also, would I be correct in assuming that custom searches will be added eventually?
One last thing that i found is that you can hide a category, but to my knowledge there is no way of restoring it.
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