Pressing Enter in empty search bar doesn't work anymore
I used to be able to press Enter in the empty Firefox search bar to bring up the (DuckDuckGo) search page and enter my search from there. Don't ask me why I like doing that, but now after the latest Firefox update, 128.0, on my MacBook Air I can't do that anymore. I have to type in the search bar to bring up the search page.
I know it's a small thing but I wonder if it can be put back to the way it used to be.
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I think it was an intentional clean-up of functionality they didn't think anyone cared about. Whether it will come back, I don't know. If your thumb can reach, hitting spacebar then Enter/Return is pretty quick.
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cfam1 said
This faulty search bar that can't search issue, coupled with other problems I've been encountering for quite some time, has me thinking it's time for a new model.
The search bar should still be able to submit searches. This thread is about what happens if you don't type anything -- Firefox used to send a blank query and it doesn't do that any more (it waits for you to type something). If you have a different problem, could you start a new question?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/desktop/form
"This thread is about what happens if you don't type anything -- Firefox used to send a blank query and it doesn't do that any more (it waits for you to type something)." Thus, it's faulty.
So was Firefox actually sending a blank query? Seems like if it was, you'd get what you actually get when you enter one blank space and hit enter, which is a 'no results' page. Seems like it actually just said to Firefox on the back end "hey, just load google.com, because nothing was in the field". If I were Google, I'd hate anyone causing a mountain of empty searches to be submitted. So, if that were actually how Firefox was doing it (and somehow I don't think it was), this change would fix that, except now it is getting searches for a single blank space. Why couldn't there be a function of coding logic that says 'hitting enter on an empty search box field loads the home page of the selected search engine', or was there and this was just a 'screw you' to users who liked the feature?
I was always sent to the search page of my preferred search engine. NOT Google. Never used Google. I was never directed there.
It would be nice if this feature still existed.
There is a very busy feedback thread on Mozilla Connect you can vote up:
sireuchre said
So was Firefox actually sending a blank query? Seems like if it was, you'd get what you actually get when you enter one blank space and hit enter, which is a 'no results' page.
Actually, there is a different result between these two, at least with Google:
- Empty search text: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=
=> Google redirects to its home page (https://www.google.com/webhp?client=firefox-b-d)
- Space search text: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=+
=> Google shows a results page with an error message
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