Firefox: Unwanted Interaction Between History and Location Field?

[ewemoa]

Today I noticed that although I had pasted https://donationcoder.com in to the location field, the browser ended up at http://donationcoder.com -- i.e. no SSL (Firefox 16.0.1).

Here are some steps to reproduce:

• Fresh installation of Firefox 16.0.1 (I used the portable version from portableapps)
• Start Firefox
• Type http://donationcoder.com in the location area and press Enter
• After seeing DC's page, exit the browser
• Start Firefox again
• Using Notepad, type https://donationcoder.com/, select the text and copy it to the clipboard
• Paste the copied URL to Firefox's location area and press Enter
• Observe no lock icon to the left of the displayed URL in the location area (or choose Tools -> Page Info and examine the results)

mouser confirmed that he experiences the same issue.  Any one else?


One work-around appears to be to apply what's mentioned at:

  http://superuser.com/a/187094

That is, via about:config, set browser.fixup.alternate.enabled to false.

Another may be to use HTTPS Everywhere, though IIUC you'd need to ensure that you've got appropriate settings for all of the sites you want to use https with.  FWIW, for DC, there is:

  https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=29671.msg292513#msg292513


Thanks to Deozaan for pointing out that the content of this post gets mangled if accessed via http -- changed the post content to address the issue.

[IainB]

This is just one "annoyance" aspect - there are others. There has been something really annoying about the Awesome bar's behaviour/functionality in FF v16 and now v17beta (I am on the ß update channel).
It persists in being too clever by half and jumping to conclusions about where you want to go, and it gets it wrong and seems to override what you typed into the A-bar anyway.
It is buggy and I assume it will all get fixed eventually.

I have the browser.fixup.alternate.enabled setting to false, and use HTTP Everywhere.

[ewemoa]

Thanks for the feedback.

I also hope it gets fixed...and soon.  It seems to me that in some cases it could be a bit of a security problem...

[TaoPhoenix]

This is just one "annoyance" aspect - there are others. There has been something really annoying about the Awesome bar's behaviour/functionality in FF v16 and now v17beta (I am on the ß update channel).
It persists in being too clever by half and jumping to conclusions about where you want to go, and it gets it wrong and seems to override what you typed into the A-bar anyway.

-IainB (October 16, 2012, 03:34 AM)

Heh Iain, don't you know by now? You aren't supposed to go to whatever site you want - your betters determine that for you, such as sponsored results!

 

[IainB]

Heh Iain, don't you know by now? You aren't supposed to go to whatever site you want - your betters determine that for you, such as sponsored results!

-TaoPhoenix (October 16, 2012, 06:54 AM)

Bugger, no, I didn't know that. I do now!

[ewemoa]

I'm not confident yet, but brief testing here seems to be indicating that 16.0.2 may have fixed this issue.


FWIW, 16.0.2 seems to be a security-related update...