FF3 autocomplete control/configuration inquiry
Gregory J. Rosmaita
before filing the following as a bug, i wanted to make sure that there
isn't an easy and obvious solution that' eluded me...
am i the only one who's noticed or been affected by the changes to the
location bar's auto-complete mechanism in the last 3 to 4 nightly
builds? i can no longer type into the location bar, due to a VERY
aggressive auto-complete interface and i cannot find anything akin
to the auto-complete options property sheet of SeaMonkey in Minefield...
the build i'm currently testing is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b2pre)
Gecko/2007120505 Minefield/3.0b2pre
as soon as i begin to type into the location bar, my screen reader
announces "context menu, list box list box, one of 25" -- unless, of
course i type more than one character in the location bar, in which case
newly input text (what i type) is appended to the end of a randomly
selected URI -- even when the location bar is blank, typing a URI
causes a previously visited URI to be randomly chosen (without
notification from my screen reader, JAWS 9.0.515) with the result that
the input being typed to the location bar is appended to the randomly
chosen URI...
the bottom line is that only by copying-and-pasting a complete URI into
the location bar, can i actually use the location bar...
this is precisely the default behavior of SeaMonkey 1.2, and even with
the latest release of SeaMonkey, it takes considerable tailoring of the
auto-complete mechanism in order to make it usable by some users
(because, obviously, autocomplete began as an accessibility aid, and
have utility -- what is needed is fine granular control over the
workings of the auto-complete mechanism, such as those offered by
SeaMonkey 1.6:
[2 notes: (1) the convention "[ ]" (left bracket space
right bracket) is used to indicate a checkbox, and (2)
the default setting is: "Location Bar Autocomplete" with
all of its sub-properties enabled]
"Location Bar AutoComplete"
[ ] Automatically complete text typed into the Location Bar
[Advanced Button]
activating the "Advanced" button generates an "Autocomplete Preferences"
property sheet, which offers the following options:
Autocomplete Preferences
[ ] Autocomplete best match as you type
[ ] Show list of matching results
[ ] Show internet search engine
[ ] Match only websites you've typed previously
more information on SeaMonkey is available at:
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/seamonkey1.1.6/
oh, and speaking of SeaMonkey, aaron and marco, will FF3 replace
navigator in SeaMonkey when FF3 ships?
gregory.
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experience and reflection. -- A. Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita: oed...@hicom.net AND una...@concentric.net
Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
Oedipus' Online Complex: http://my.opera.com/oedipus/
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David Bolter
Tomorrow's nightly build should contain a fix I think.
If curious see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=406355
cheers,
David
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Gregory J. Rosmaita
thanks for the pointer -- you wouldn't know it from my email, but
i actually do have a mozilla bugzilla account... next time i'll
start there...
one thing that may have been lost in my post was the question,
> > speaking of SeaMonkey, aaron and marco, will FF3 replace
> > navigator in SeaMonkey when FF3 ships?
can anyone tell me anything about plans for SeaMonkey, or is the
SeaMonkey a11y effort separate from the FF a11y effort, and should
i be bothering a different a11y group at seamonkey.org?
one thing which has come to mind from this experience, from a usability
standpoint, is that the situation could have been mitigated if the user
had the option to use a hot key to either edit the location bar directly,
or to open a "Location" dialog box (as IE does in response to CONTROL
plus O) -- a user could very well want one (the location bar) to
implement an autocomplete routine (over which the user, of course, needs
configurability) while setting the other not to attempt to autocomplete
or keep a history buffer -- or, if the user wanted, autocomplete could
be toggled on and off in both, or neither, input interface, in accordance
with user-set parameters, such as those implemented in current builds of
SeaMonkey... chances are that users will be more likely to find a way
to work around the problem i encountered by invoking an intermediate
input interface, which allowed me to directly input new text into an
input interface..
gregory.
--------------------------------------------------------------
CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because
nobody tries to please him.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
--------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita: oed...@hicom.net
Oedipus' Online Complex: http://my.opera.com/oedipus/
Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
--------------------------------------------------------------
Marco Zehe
let me explain a bit about how the new AutoComplete feature works in
Firefox 3. Perhaps that will make the behaviour you're seeing a bit more
understandable.
The AutoComplete feature on the Location bar now matches URIs as well as
page titles as soon as you start typing something. The AutoComplete will
pop up showing you the first match it finds with the text you typed.
This means, the more you type, the better the match you're getting. With
the newest addition of the AutoComplete feature, which landed in the
11/30 trunk build, you also are told whether the URL/page found is a
bookmark you already created earlier, or if it has any tags you may have
added etc.
Since the 12/05 build, which is what you quoted originally, this
information is also fully accessible by JAWS. So if you typed "mozilla"
in your location bar, you can then hit DownArrow to select the first
match it found. It will give you the page title first, followed by the URL.
However, if you want to dismiss the popup and continue typing in the
location bar without it trying to find a match, you can hit ESCAPE, and
the popup is closed, and all you typed will be still intact. However, as
soon as it finds a new match, the popup will reappear.
I use the AutoComplete tohelp me fill out Bonsai queries (giving me
checkins of a given period). I simply type "bonsai" into the location
bar, hit DownArrow and get the last bonsai query I visited. I then hit
Escape to drop out of the popup, but with the bonsai query intact in the
location bar, right there for me to edit min and maxdate values to my
liking. I then hit enter, and there is my new query. Very convenient.
BTW: We are thinking about stripping the http://, and possibly www
portions of the URL in the AutoComplete list, because it takes so long
for speech synths to speak that (in English it's even longer than in
German, which is my mother tongue).
I hope this helps clarify the workings of the new AutoComplete feature.
As for your question:
>>> speaking of SeaMonkey, aaron and marco, will FF3 replace
>>> navigator in SeaMonkey when FF3 ships?
SeaMonkey is independently developed from Firefox. I just asked your
question on the #seamonkey IRC channel, and this is the bottom line of
what they told me: While all features of the Gecko 1.9 backend will be
available in both products, including all of the accessibility
enhancements, this does not mean that Navigator in SeaMonkey 2.0, and
Firefox 3.0 will match feature for feature. So it is very possible that
dialogs look different or some things are handled in a different fashion.
To get more specifics on what they plan on introducing in SeaMonkey 2.0,
I suggest asking them directly.
Marco