tumpio / searchbuttonsbar

A XUL addon for Firefox and Pale Moon browsers.
https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/searchbuttonsbar
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Search Buttons on Search Bar (Quick Search Bar functionality) #1

Open tumpio opened 8 years ago

tumpio commented 8 years ago

A feature request from user review:

Please save precious real estate and especially click count by integrating the Search Buttons directly onto the Search Bar. This is the way the "Quick Search Bar" extention used to work which was unfortunately pulled (not to be confused with the "QuickSearchBar" extention).

The buttons should be equally spaced across the bar, and should effectively cover the entire bar (button icons separated by standard separator lines). The button i.e. area of the bar clicked will thus immediately (upon Enter) determine which search engine is used.

The selectable search engines should be the ones activated in the current Firefox Search list and the order of the buttons should be configurable. New Search options may be easily added using the "Add to Search Bar" extention.

By integrating the buttons directly into the bar, the amount of clicks is halved. Currently one click is required into the bar and another to change the active search engine. These can be combined in the above way to substantially increase efficiency and use of space simultaneously. This is the way the standard Firefox Search Bar should work!

This feature request consists of two separate tasks:

Both requires a setting to let the user choose between the old and new behaviour.

List of other features of the Quick Search Bar add-on:

ghost commented 8 years ago

Hello tumpio, thanks for your response. To your questions on my user review:

I'm also interested to hear why the Quick Search Bar add-on was pulled out? And was it still working in the latest Firefox?

No, the Quick Search Bar extention did not work with the new Firefox Search Bar anymore, even using the Classic Theme Restorer-restored Search Bar. I presume that the developer found this to be one Firefox change too far. It might also be related to the upcoming deprecation of XUL, but I am only guessing: http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-changes-firefox-apis-developers-unhappy/

Anyhow, I found the Quick Search Bar add-on to be extremely helpful and still think that this is the way the Search Bar should work. Instead of "move mouse and select" -> "type" -> "move mouse and select", searches would just become "move mouse and select" -> "type", which is substantially easier. I do have a FEBE dump of the Quick Search Bar xpi if this would help.

VulkHead commented 8 years ago

Used to love that extension back in the good ol' days.. Eventually I wanted a lighter experience on firefox and I stopped using extensions for a long, long time. A couple of years later I wanted a cleanest experience on firefox and that awesome search bar extension cross around my mind but I forgot the name of it “Quick Search Bar”.. I kept searching between addons for that extension but never saw it again. Recently I came across gnomon's review in your extension post and that lead me to here. Wow, it was great extension, very clean, effective and user friendly.. Is a waste that end it up nowhere, was one the best functionalities on firefox back then. I don't know what the heck are thinking ff developers, that addon was gold, they should have implemented into firefox since it's release. Anyways.. It would be awesome if you recreate it's original functionality like gnomon said. firefox-quick-search-bar

tumpio commented 8 years ago

Hello @VulkHead

There are two major problems:

The latter could be easily fixed by providing some compenstaion for the work required.