Update 149.0 made searching more difficult

[Loyisius]

Before update 149.0: I typed a word into the top right search box and then clicked the preferred search engine icon to complete the search. This took two (2) actions.

After update 149.0: When I type a word into the top right search box I then have to click the drop down menu to the left and select the preferred search engine by clicking and then press enter or click the arrow to complete the search. Now it takes four (4) actions.

Last time I made a similar post about this regarding the address bar, I was provided with a partial fix. On 'about config' change "browser urlbar scotchBonnet enableOverride" to false.

Is a similar fix possible here? Can the instant click searching be brought back?

[Alarm-Siren]

Absolutely agree, I think this is a step backwards. Not only is it now more steps to complete the same function, but on any subsequent search if you don't want to use the same search engine as you previously selected (in my case, almost always) you have to clear it first *then* select a new one so 5 steps in total!

Even more bizarre to me, is that this function still exists and works just fine in the main address bar. I don't understand why such a useful feature would have been removed from the dedicated search bar, when it still exists in the address bar. (I might add that I have keyword.enabled set to false so in theory it shouldn't be possible for me to search from the address bar at all, which makes the presence of the search engine buttons on the address bar but not the search bar even more bizarre).

At this point I think the Firefox devs just don't like the seperate search bar, so they're trying to deliberately hobble it. I do understand that most people are perfectly fine with a combined address and search bar, but for me it absolutely breaks my flow. I *never* want a search results page when I type (or mistype) a web address, or vice-versa. They are seperate functions to me, and I want them to be seperate.

[kimbastin]

Totally agree! This is not an improvement, this is breakage!

The search bar worked perfectly well before, and this update has made it worse, with no benefit at all that I can see.

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Is it, about, Add the Search bar to your Firefox toolbar
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-search-bar-firefox-toolbar

A subject https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1rm5sk3/how_to_change_back_to_old_search_bar browser.search.widget.new

Other subject, browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/address-bar-updates-now-live-in-firefox-nightly/m-p/97642...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1571609

[Alarm-Siren]

Yes, the browser.search.widget.new (when set to false) does indeed restore the old (correct) functionality of the search bar. So thank you for that, I would never have found that on my own - and I did look!

That being said, its not going to be a permanent fix since the Firefox devs are already threatening to remove the "old code" as per the bug link in your other post: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2012951

[bradsmithsite]

This worked, thanks.

[Firephex]

Ah, thank you so much, the new change is absolutely horrible and bad.

Greetings.

[ole9762]

This is a horrible change, indeed! Hope the devs rethink this one.

[Agentvirtuel]

browser.search.widget.new, according to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2012951

[bradsmithsite]

I would consider this a new feature, always give people an option. Instead of using Firefox, I have to find a stupid little hidden setting each time. YouTube alienate there audience by making changes that no one asked for, don't do the same Mozilla.

[Moilleadóir]

And what happens when they remove/deprecate this setting?

Or support tell you to revert your settings? After years of applying these work-arounds, how would anyone remember them all?

[ukgardener]

Totally agree.  This makes it much worse.  They should have provided a setting within the browser to choose which we want.  I would like to revert back to the old way please.  Thank you

[Guillaume41]

I totally agree too. I ended up on this discussion looking for a place to ask Mozilla to backtrack on this.

[Momaday]

Thanks for posting about it OP. I couldn't find your topic so I posted myself about that really unwelcome change in 149. I hope we can keep the search bar the way it was. 

[chazzitdown]

What the **bleep** is perplexity and why I need it in my search bar by default? Event that crap is not affected by the block AI thing. It is the second time Mozilla just **bleep** with the search bar increasing complexity when something already works great.

[Pleen]

Glad to find this post, and the fix which worked for me:

• about:config
• browser.search.widget.new TRUE → FALSE

I was pretty desperate and was about to ask for help here, kudos to those who came before me!

[Kuni]

Voicing my displeasure at the new search bar as well. They've removed the ability to ctrl up/down through your search engine list. Removing it as "old code" shows a horrendous disconnect with usability.

[Buttcake]

The new search bar is an untested and clunky abomination and needs to be reverted to the old one by default. At least, please never remove the browser.search.widget.new pref until the new system has the very same functionality as the old one (i.e.: type stuff -> space saving menu auto-opens -> single click on icon of choice starts search).

Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to turn a perfectly fine and fast workflow into this usability hell?!

[Robertos]

I have only registered to say just that - the new search bar change is really bad. As said before, it takes more moves to make a simple search and even the action of locating a needed search bar from a drop-down list takes more time than in the previous version. And I thought that the change from some time ago which blocked opening the search-engine-retaed website just by clicking an empty field in the search field was bad enough (now I need to type gibberish), now it is 100 times worse 😞

[DRH]

In version 148 and previous the search worked perfectly, quick and easy. Why on earth fix something that was not broken and make it worse. This change is just plain stupid.

[PaulFirefoxUX]

Hello!

I'm a Firefox UX designer, new on the Search & Suggest team (these design changes were made before I joined the team).

The old version was removed as the default because it caused issues for accessibility. (i.e. problems for people who physically can’t use a mouse and have no choice but to use an alternative navigation method).
I'm keen to learn what could be improved about the new design that could make it as good as – or even better – than the old version for everybody.

In the new version, you can press alt-downarrow to open the list of search engines, and type the first letter of a search engine to select it.

Could you go into more detail about anything else that made the old version better for you, and how you would use it?

What is it that you'd miss? The icons being visible by default? The icons not having labels? The icons being shown in a grid? The keyboard shortcuts? How many search engines do you have listed?

If the new menu could show a grid of icons instead of a list, and somehow be pinned open by default (not in its current position of course) then would that help?

I’m here to listen to your feedback and take it back to the team to advocate for your needs. I can’t get it reverted, but I can make other changes.

And again, I wasn’t on the team when this was designed so I’d appreciate your help to make this work better for you.

Thanks!

[chazzitdown]

1. Shift + Enter to go the search page (The "fix" provided to other unsolicited change that before was a simple enter)

2. Reduce unnecessary actions like: (1) search engine selection + (2) enter -> if we are selecting the search engine why do we need to confirm it twice?

3. Keep previous search engines configuration -> Why do we have to configure things that were already done? Why a new search engine was included by default?

4. Required remove selected engine prior to select (2 clicks action) -> Ok, I assume some people just want to return to default search engine clicking the remove icon, but why do we need to perform a double click in the same element/section/area to get a list of search engines? Another (big) group of people just want to change the search engine.

[joshua3]

1.  When search box is separated, press a single tab to go from address-bar to search box.  (control-t, tab, type, enter)  Now the workflow is much more complicated from a keyboard perspective.

2.  The ability to enter a search term, and middle click on multiple search providers to open multiple searches is absent from the new implementation.  This is actually huge to me.  I very often want to run the same or similar searches on multiple providers.  Sometimes regular search providers, sometimes shopping-related, sometimes I'm trying to find some lost piece of media and need to run a search on up to 10 separate obscure search sites.

3.  The ability to type a search term, THEN select a search provider.  The new implementation assumes you know what kind of search you are doing before you do it.

4.  I'm not sure I understand how the old search box didn't work on alternative inputs.  In the past, I would regularly type a search term, decide I wanted to use my second search provider, hit tab twice, then hit enter.

[Didymus20X6]

I just found this:
https://www.askvg.com/how-to-restore-old-classic-search-bar-in-mozilla-firefox-149-and-later/

There needs to be some way to let users know when something is being changed, and to let them know what they can do to fix it themselves if there's a problem.

[romanpaladino]

- I thing I miss the most is the ability to simply click in any of the search engine icons that I've added to the drop-down menu and take me there without having to put a search term.  

- Also miss the ability to type a search term then select the search engine from the drop-down menu and clicking on it once. Just once. 

[Didymus20X6]

That link I posted will show you how to fix that.
Basically:
1.  About:Config

2.  Search for browser.search.widget.new

3.  Set it to "False."

[romanpaladino]

Thank you, it did fix most of it. 

It didn't fix my first point: clicking on an icon and connecting directly to that website without having to imput a serch term. That ability was lost back in version 137 (I believe).  But for now this is a pretty good fix that I can l live with, so thank you for the info.

[AmericanLoco]

Paul,

As others mentioned, a big one is being able to type in a search term, then choose your search provider. In the old search widget, if you typed in your term, clicked the drop-down and then chose "Wikipedia", it would immediately search Wikipedia.

Now, if you type in your term, select Wikipedia from the drop down, it does not immediately perform the search. Instead it "selects" Wikipedia. Then you need to mouse of and select go, or hit enter. It just adds an unnecessary step and makes the experience feel more clunky than it needs to be. If you are selected Wikipedia, obviously you want to search Wikipedia, so it makes sense to just perform the search on Wikipedia immediately.

[PaulFirefoxUX]

100% agree with you! The engineering team are already fixing this. Watch this space.

[davidn]

Great, thank you, this is heartening to hear! It would also be great if the icons for search providers could appear right away on typing or clicking the search box. I think my flow previously was: Type something and click on the search provider icon which was already there (Wikipedia, A translation service). So: Two actions in total.

When you are doing this a hundred times in a day, you really don't want any additional clicks like from opening a dropdown.

[PaulFirefoxUX]

I agree with this too, but that's a slightly bigger change than making the search run immediately so it will take a little longer. I've been prototyping how that would work in its new location.

Not everybody wants to use alternative search engines, so I think it would be a good idea to have an option to always pin them open as you type somehow rather than it just being open by default for everyone.

Thanks again for your feedback!

[Antares]

If somebody does not want to use alternative search engines then I'd think they already do what we all do with default search engines the browser ships with that we don't want to use: remove them in the settings, so there would be nothing to display there if they have only one engine set.

Please do kindly at least make it clear to the team that until those changes are done and the search bar is back to being as convenient and functionable as it has been before v.149, to please absolutely not remove browser.search.widget.new as had already been proposed in the bugzilla that has already been linked in this discussion. 

[PaulFirefoxUX]

Thanks for pointing me to that Bugzilla ticket. I've added a comment to say we should make the fixes before removing that pref. (and I will advocate for this in our meetings too)

[Antares]

Thank you, really appreciate you coming here, talking and listening to us like you do. 

Doing exactly that - removing the hidden-away option that allowed people to revert the change - was the only reaction to the massive criticism of the design changes of Firefox Mobile, so this happening also in this situation was a natural fear.

[jasomdotnet]

Hey @PaulFirefoxUX ,

while we're improving the search in FF, can the UX department make all search engines accesible from the context menu? (now, when I right-click on the highlighted text I can use only the default search).

Thanks.

[no11]

Is this actually about accessibility, or is it about forcing bad mobile UI on everyone who isn't using a hand held ad feed toy? Maybe mobile users should complain about bad website design instead of expecting Firefox to degrade browser UX just to compensate for their tiny screens.

[DRH]

Completely agree

The implementation of this function in firefox was the very best, superior to that of any other browser. I have not seen or heard any complaints about it by anyone. If this is something to do with accessibility on the mobile version of firefox why ruin the pc version?

I do not use keyboard shortcuts, good luck to those who do, but I find them slow and awkward, for me the mouse is much faster and easier to use and I cannot remember the thousands of key combinations in all the software that I use.

The new version is awful to use. I have used "about:config > browser.search.widget.new >false" to revert to the previous version but have read that this option will be removed in a future version of firefox. Why? What's the reason for taking away peoples choice? The announcement that the old version will not be reinstated is just the same arrogant behaviour that microsoft often exhibits. This sort of thing is why users desert software they have used for years. Do mozilla want to drive even more users away from firefox?

Thank you

[ToEn]

Before Firefox 149, I could search with a specific engine in a single click:
1. Select a search engine --> search immediately with that engine
(The next search would still use the default engine)

In Firefox 149, the flow requires multiple steps:
1. Click the icon to open the search engine menu
2. Select a search engine
3. Press Enter --> search with that engine
4. Manually switch back to the default engine

Please consider restoring the old one-click temporary search behavior.

[PaulFirefoxUX]

Please see my other replies in this thread. The old version won't be restored, but the new version will be updated. Watch out soon for changes in how it behaves like 'search immediately runs when you select a search engine', and a while later for updates that need to change to the way it looks.

[PatrickKing]

Hi Paul, I really do appreciate your asking the community about the changes. 

I've currently got 14-20 search engines added, between work/personal systems.

I think the original poster captured the core issue with the changes: it takes 4 actions to perform a search with the new bar, where before it took 2. An extra action is needed to open the search engine select control. Previously, making an engine choice and submitting the search were done in the same action, now two separate inputs are needed. 

In addition to that, the new search bar now remembers the last used engine, instead of returning to the default. I might send a search to a specialized site now and then, but overwhelmingly I most commonly want to do a web search with DDG. That process now has an extra step in there too, if the default engine wasn't the last one I used.