Relocate search engine buttons in Awesome Bar (Location Bar)

[bhabba]

If you enable the settings Enhance my Awesome Bar and Show search engines in the location bar then the search engine buttons are shown below the search suggestions.

This layout can become pretty annoying usability-wise: While typing in the Awesome Bar Firefox gradually looks for occurences of the part of the term you've already typed in different places (history, bookmarks, open tabs, search suggestions etc.) and the suggestions get more precise with every character you add to the term. Now the problem is that the number of lines of suggestions often changes multiple times while and even after typing until the definitive set of suggestion results is calculated – and with changing number of lines the search engine buttons move up and down as well! The time it takes to calculate search suggestions is probably negligible on very fast machines but on normal laptops it can take up to several seconds – especially if you have a large history I suppose.

If you just quickly type in a term and want to search for it with one of the search engine buttons a lot of times you'll miss to click the right button because it got moved further down due to the emergence of one or more additional search suggestion line(s). Honestly this behaviour is driving me crazy sometimes... :expressionless:

Conceivable solutions (always make the position of the search engine buttons fixed):

• Relocate the search engine buttons to left or right side (my preferred solution).
• Relocate the search engine buttons to the top, i.e. above the search suggestions.
• Set the number of search suggestion lines to a fixed number (the one provided by the setting Total suggestions limit) with the consequence of displaying empty suggestions lines if not enough results are found for the entered term.

[Quicksaver]

Relocate the search engine buttons to left or right side (my preferred solution).

For me this is the worst solution actually, it wouldn't take big number of search engines to make it look huge and cramped, taking away space that would otherwise be useful for showing big titles / addresses in the suggestions.

Relocate the search engine buttons to the top, i.e. above the search suggestions.

Suggestions should always be right next to the thing they are suggesting for (i.e. the location bar where you are typing), otherwise it would defeat the purpose of having easy-access suggestions in the first place.

Set the number of search suggestion lines to a fixed number (the one provided by the setting Total suggestions limit) with the consequence of displaying empty suggestions lines if not enough results are found for the entered term.

This could work. :)

[bhabba]

Wow, fast response! :smiley:

Well, I have to basically agree to your objections to the first and second solution and the third solution is perfectly fine with me, too!

[Quicksaver]

By the way, it will take me a few weeks to get to this. I'm fairly busy with other things at the moment, I hope it doesn't drive you too crazy in the meantime. :)

[bhabba]

@Quicksaver commented on 16. März 2016, 17:33 MEZ:

I hope it doesn't drive you too crazy in the meantime. :)

I'm afraid it's already too late for that... :suspect: :godmode: :goberserk:

[Quicksaver]

I should figure out github's emoticons some time. :p