Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

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SC2
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Joined: December 22nd, 2011, 6:27 pm

Re: Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete issue

Post by SC2 »

I don't like the new way either. I do speak URL, and it was easy and simple to navigate to pages that i remembered. Now it's a game of "beat the algorithm". I'm sure someone with a lot of resources could perfectly recreate the firefox or safari suggestion bar, but why do that, when you can be different instead? So instead, you will want to create all the following options in the settings:


First option (Checkmark):
Don't or do use bookmarks for autocompletion. As the most used bookmarks will always be the top most pages in history (if history is enabled), they will also show up on top of autocompletion automatically.

Second option (Checkmark):
Autocompletion shows bookmarks on the left/right. As URL-talker want the urls to be close to what they're typing, moving the urls to the left of the titles will help them greatly.

Third option (Checkmark):
Autocompletion does not search/searches titles. Searching titles makes no sense for people who want to remember what page was loaded, as titles almost never enter the consciousness of the url-aware user. It's useful for people who want their machines to suggest random stuff i guess, and I can see that those would be the larger part of the audience of a browser.

Length of URL-suggestions (number):
As usual, this would be a number or drop down with the suggestion of several numbers, where one of the options would be infinite rows of data.

Or, instead of the ones above, just make one option (checkmark):
I know/don't know that computers are bad at parsing strings that where not specifically created for machine-readability. This would then enable the 'olden' way of doing url suggestions, or use the new way when disabled.
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cflawson
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Re: Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete issue

Post by cflawson »

Either the above poster is joking or has been using SeaMonkey/Mozilla Suite since like 1998 and thus thinks that's the normal way of doing things. There is absolutely NO WAY Camino is ever adopting anything that verbose in prefs.

cl
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Uncle Asad
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Re: Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

Post by Uncle Asad »

Although our goal is to continue refining the autocomplete system until it works correctly for everyone out-of-the-box, in the short term we don't have the ability to do that. So, for the interim, we've implemented a hidden preference to disable page titles as a data source for autocomplete.

Beginning in the January 4 nightly (and forthcoming in 2.1.1), setting camino.autocomplete_from_titles to false and then restarting Camino will cause autocomplete to only match against URLs.
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mem0
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Joined: May 3rd, 2009, 1:07 pm

Re: Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

Post by mem0 »

Uncle Asad wrote:Although our goal is to continue refining the autocomplete system until it works correctly for everyone out-of-the-box, in the short term we don't have the ability to do that. So, for the interim, we've implemented a hidden preference to disable page titles as a data source for autocomplete.


Many thanks !!!!! But why only 'as a temporary measure' ? Why not for ever as a hidden pref :D After the refining maybe users would like also to disable the title-matching...
morgannagrom
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Joined: December 1st, 2011, 11:13 am

Re: Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

Post by morgannagrom »

Thank you! Soooo much easier to use now.

I hope that having more than 10 results, and having URLs shown to the left could be options at some point as well. But again, thank you for this. My favorite browser is usable again!
peterpqa
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Joined: March 4th, 2007, 9:58 am

Re: Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete issue

Post by peterpqa »

Uncle Asad wrote:tl;dr Almost all of the matches that you thought were matching random letters in the middle of "words" in URLs were instead matching words in the title; we specifically do not match on random letters inside words (although due to bug 506762, it might appear that way if you arrow through the results).

I read thru bug 506762 (last comment Mar 2011, re: Camino 2.0.?). But your above comment in this thread (Dec 2011) does not seem correct to me. In Camino 2.1, when I have the toolbar showing and I type "g" into the location bar, one of the ten suggestions is for a page titled "Sketchup Help" which does not contain the letter "g". The URL, however, is "http://support.google.com/sketchup/?hi=en" which does indeed contain the letter "g". When I arrow down to it, the location bar autocompletes only with "google.com/sketchup/?hi=en" (beginning with the "g") but it omits the "support." front end (and "http://" which I presume is stripped out in any case). Nevertheless, when the location bar only contains "google.com/sketchup/?hi=en" and I press Return, it takes me to "http://support.google.com/sketchup/?hi=en".

I'd prefer autocomplete suggestions that only include URLs beginning with the letter/string I type (minus "http://www.", "http://ww2.", etc.).* But I would be okay with autocomplete suggestions that include URLs and page titles that BEGIN with the letter/string I type. But autocomplete suggestions that include any URL or page title that merely CONTAINS a letter/string, as in the example above, are useless.

*PS: I'd prefer the same behavior with the toolbar hidden and invoking the location bar with Command+L.
HenriHudson
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Re: Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

Post by HenriHudson »

I read the arguments about keeping options to a minimum, but considering the fact autocomplete is such a widely used feature while different users have quite different priorities, it might be time for developers to reconsider this. Creating a new "autocomplete behavior" submenu in Camino's preferences, or renaming the History submenu to something like "My tracks" and including mutually non exclusive autocomplete options there now seems to make a lot of sense.

Such a list of options could include:
- search first by first letters of bookmarks names
- search first by first letters of page titles
- search first by first letters of recent subdomain names
- search by entire "words"* within recent page titles
- search by entire "words"* within recent page urls.

If this solution is not chosen, considering the autocomplete field is not a search field but a way to access memorized information, IMO the priorities in the algorithm should be this:
1st. take and propose from the first letters of bookmark names and of page titles in recent history, alternating proposals between the two categories in order to please (or displease :wink: ) everybody
2nd. take and propose from the first letters of subdomain names in bookmarks' and recent history's urls
3rd. then and only then, if no match was found in stages 1 and 2, take and propose words* from within bookmarks names, bookmark shortcuts, pages titles, page urls in history

*sequences of letters between question marks, dots, slashes and so on

HH
peterpqa
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Joined: March 4th, 2007, 9:58 am

Re: Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

Post by peterpqa »

I'm not sure which of the three currently active threads about autocomplete this should go in, so I'm posting it in all three. Hope that's not bad netiquette.

I'm running the 18 Jan nightly. Thanks for restoring the autocomplete list to the hidden-toolbar Command+L. But I'm still seeing the following behavior, both with the toolbar showing and with it hidden:

1. The autocomplete list still populates with suggestions CONTAINING a letter/string in either the page title or the URL, not just those BEGINNING with the letter/string. Example: just typing a single "g" in the box returns page title "Sketchup Help" (no "g") and URL "http://support.google.com/sketchup/?hi=en" (has a "g"). The location box autocompletes just from the "g" forward ("google.com/sketchup/?hi=en") but when I press Return, Camino takes me to the page for the full URL. Should I file a new bug on this?

2. Setting the hidden preference "camino.autocomplete_from_titles" to "false" and restarting Camino is not working for me. The locations list still populates with page titles, URLs and bookmarks as in #1 above.

Thanks for all your good work on Camino.
phiw13
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Re: Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

Post by phiw13 »

peterpqa wrote:1. The autocomplete list still populates with suggestions CONTAINING a letter/string in either the page title or the URL, not just those BEGINNING with the letter/string. Example: just typing a single "g" in the box returns page title "Sketchup Help" (no "g") and URL "http://support.google.com/sketchup/?hi=en" (has a "g"). The location box autocompletes just from the "g" forward ("google.com/sketchup/?hi=en") but when I press Return, Camino takes me to the page for the full URL. Should I file a new bug on this?

That is the expected behaviour: that url contains 2 relevant 'words': 'support' and 'google'. What you see in the location bar when selecting the entry is what follows the character(s) you already have typed. Camino doesn't overwrite those (in rare cases that leads to unexpected results, see e.g bug 506762, comment 5).

peterpqa wrote:2. Setting the hidden preference "camino.autocomplete_from_titles" to "false" and restarting Camino is not working for me. The locations list still populates with page titles, URLs and bookmarks as in #1 above.

The drop down will still show the title of the pages, but nothing in the title will be used for lookup with that setting.
For example, you have a page with title 'xyz' with url 'xyz . com' (spaces added, else the forum linkifies that thing), and another page with title 'xyz' but living at url 'abcd . com'. With "camino.autocomplete_from_titles" set to "false", only the first page will show up in the list if you type xyz.
Siderea
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Joined: December 17th, 2011, 1:18 pm

Re: Don't like Camino 2.1 location bar autocomplete behavior

Post by Siderea »

As per previous, I had downgraded to 2.0.9 because of the autocomplete issue. Having heard that you had added the hidden pref "camino.autocomplete_from_titles", I finally just got around to installing 2.1.2 and setting that pref true. I want to thank you to going to the effort to try to acomodate those of us who preferred the old behavior.

Unfortunately, the fix doesn't actually restore the earlier behavior. I'm not sure what it does do, but I miss the earlier behavior, so I downgraded back to 2.0.9.

Illustrative example: 2.0.9 behavior: first match on "l"' is "https://www.livejournal.com/login.bml". 2.1.2. behavior: first through 4th matches on "l" are "http://siderea.livejournal.com/[...]", fifth match is "https://www.livejournal.com/login.bml". I don't know what the difference is that is causing this.

Am bummed that the pref doesn't restore earlier behavior.
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