5

  • A workable and thus personalized address bar - "top hits" don't reflect my browsing behavior.

  • BugsDesktopUnder Review

Entering "e" on a fresh profile in Orion shows ebay.com in top hits while in Safari it doesn't show anything.
Entering "f" shows facebook.com on both.

I'm not sure where these top hits are coming from. Partly they come from the users history and in other cases I guess they come from some popular website index.

You can find examples by iterating through the alphabet in a plain browser installation.

Entering "t" shows twitter.com in Orion and tripadvisor.com in Safari...

Again, my suggestion is that the user gets the choice to remove these suggestions as there is no gain from showing unrelated websites.

"s" shows stackoverflow.com, there is a high chance that I will never visit this website but currently it will be shown to me whenever I enter "s", "st", "sta", "stac",.... depending if the history holds another entry of the same preceding letters.

[history empty]
"s" - stackoverflow.com
[visiting standalone.com]
"s" - standalone.com
"st" - standalone.com
"sta" - standalone.com
"stac" - stackoverflow.com
...

Maybe I'm not getting the story here - I'm happy to discuss.

    Orion ships with a list of top sites.

    I think you are right in terms of how we should change our default behavior.

    I think what you are suggesting is

    • Remove the default top sites list we are shipping with
    • "remember" domains that redirect (so gmail.com would be remembered).

    Orion currently does not remember in History domains that redirect. It is strange because Safari does not either (gmail.com will not show up in history) so it is not clear where is the top hit coming from in safari (unless it is somehow hard coded for Safari).

    Looking for your further guidance and simplifiny the ask into small steps.

      ad 1.
      100% correct, the Orion default top sites are not at all personalized and thus aren't likely to be handy to users.

      ad 2.
      What you describe is what I'm looking for. The address bar suggestions, especially the topmost ones, i.e., top hits, should allow me to autocomplete what I started to type based on my personal usage. Redirecting domains should be included in my view.

      For me the two examples are:

      1. "gmail.com" redirecting to "mail.google.com"
      2. "mail.office365.com" redirecting to "outlook.office365.com"

      I use both, one for private and the other for business - entering "gm" + enter opens Gmail, entering "mai" + enter opens the business mail account.

      ad 3. (additionally)
      I would see elevated user experience by providing an option to directly delete personalized address bar suggestions while showing them, i.e., top hits and history. Right clicking, ⌥, or similar would be suggestions for user interactions to show a delete button.

      • Vlad replied to this.

        rosenrot It is not clear where gmail.com is coming from in safari? It is not recorded in history as this site does not exist (redirects to mail.google.com)

            Vlad you stated in your previous post that it isn't clear where Safari takes "gmail.com" from. It is only there after visiting the site and having it in history. From seeing their other "history free" top hits I guess they use a specific tophits list like Orion does, as well.

            Entering "gmail.com" and "mail.office365.com" in Safari (no history stored) keeps these domains and shows them under "top hits" with these domains even though they are redirected.

                Ok as a quick fix we can add redirected domains to history.

                  I‘m already more than happy that one or another of my suggestions are heard.

                  I‘m just suggesting what Orion would make stand out as a browser and I‘m aware that other suggestions might have higher priority.

                    14 days later
                    2 years later

                    Sorry for commenting on an old thread, but I'm having the same issue: websites that I've previously visited appear in my Top Hits, even though I have removed all entries from my history. The behavior persists across restarts.

                    In my case, I meant to visit 'theguardian.com' but mistyped the URL as 'guardian.com', which is an unrelated site. Now whenever I start typing 'gua...' I get suggested the (to me) irrelevant 'guardian.com' as a top hit. One could argue that this is user error, since I'm not actually typing the first letters of the right website, but this behavior differs from what I'm used to in Chrome and consistently trips me up.

                    I read above that Orion "ships with a list of top sites". Perhaps the fact that I'm seeing 'guardian.com' in my Top Hits has nothing to do with me having ever visited it. Instead, it's just a match from this standard list. If so, think it would be great if any of the following were an option: a) disable this list altogether, b) blacklist specific sites, d) downweight all hits from this list unless they overlap with my own personal browsing history.

                      adriaan I‘m happy that you commented here as this is just not user friendly and any other behaviour would be better than the current one.

                      I‘m seeing gmx.net whenever I hit „g“ which is what I do to open my everyday gmail mailbox. One might think that would puzzle more people, but maybe it is just me.

                          adriaan

                          In my case, I meant to visit 'theguardian.com' but mistyped the URL as 'guardian.com', which is an unrelated site. Now whenever I start typing 'gua...' I get suggested the (to me) irrelevant 'guardian.com' as a top hit.

                          That sounds like expected behavior? What is exactly the ask or what algorithm should Orion change/implement?

                          I recommend opening a new thread for this.

                              4 days later

                              Vlad

                              Hi Vlad, thanks for taking the time to reply.

                              That sounds like expected behavior

                              It might be from an implementation standpoint [1], but as a new user coming from Chrome I don't find it particularly desirable.

                              The ask: Top Hits should should only show websites that reflect my own browsing behavior. If that's too much to ask, let me at least configure the order in which the different kinds of autocomplete suggestions are shown, so that I can downrank Top Hits and boost history hits.

                              [1]: Turns out Safari behaves the same way.

                              • Vlad replied to this.

                                  adriaan

                                  Top Hits should only show websites that reflect my own browsing behavior. If that's too much to ask,

                                  This seems subjective and does not exactly tell us what it means and implementation details?

                                  [1]: Turns out Safari behaves the same way.

                                  Orion follows Apple's guidance for many things as we want Orion to feel as a native app.

                                      This seems subjective

                                      Well, yeah, that's the point. I'm giving feedback about my own experiences as a user, based on what I've come to expect from other browsers. I think the key thing to note, based on this thread, is that I'm not alone.

                                      we want Orion to feel as a native app

                                      And it does an amazing job of that, truly! That said, I use Orion precisely because it's not Safari, a browser I've tried to like many times, invariably to come to the conclusion that Safari feels like a browser designed by a team that would much rather have you install an app from the App Store than use a web app.

                                      I have no data to back this up, but I think it's fair to guess that the kinds of people that try out (and evangelize) less-known browsers belong to the class of 'power users'. It strikes me as an odd strategy to take design cues from a browser that offers little to such users.

                                      implementation details

                                      I'm a software engineer with plenty of experience in search, ranking, fuzzy matching algos, and the like. I'd be happy to brainstorm.

                                      Actionable solutions might be:

                                      1. Making the order of autocomplete suggestions (in settings > search > autocomplete suggestions) configurable by drag-and-dropping items in the desired order.
                                      2. Subjecting Top Hits to a filtering step based on a user-configurable list of excluded websites.
                                      • Vlad replied to this.

                                        adriaan

                                        That is fair.

                                        I think the key thing to note, based on this thread, is that I'm not alone.

                                        I hope you can appreciate that this has only 3 upvotes, is one out of 2000+ issues posted on this forum, and our team is only 3 devs. We are happy to do quick changes (if you can define one that would be great) but any sort of prolonged dev time competes with everything else.

                                            Vlad
                                            100% understand. I'm a small-team dev myself with a backlog that grows faster than can be completed. So no worries.

                                            Thanks for changing the status of this issue. The very 'quickest' change I can think of is to make the search scope of 'Top Hits' configurable, in the same way that on macOS one can configure where Spotlight should search. A preconfigured list of websites can be one of the options, alongside history, bookmarks, etc.

                                            (But, with zero knowledge of the code base, I have no idea if that's actually a quick change.)

                                            Anyway, I'm going to leave it at this for now, so you can focus on other issues. Let me know if you or any of the devs want to pick up the thread again.

                                                4 months later

                                                Vlad 'gm' matches 'Gmail' as a part of word inside the title. The domain where gmail lives does not correspond to anything similar.

                                                I haven't read this full thread but my 2 cents are that Orion should remember what I typed into the address bar even if it redirects to another domain.

                                                That is what Chrome does: if I type gmail.com and it redirects to mail.google.com, well, I can still then type gm and it'll fill gmail.com.

                                                It also remembers mail.google.com, of course...

                                                ...but it remembers that I've used gmail.com in order to get there.

                                                So it doesn't only fill domains from my history - it has a separate index of every domain I've manually typed into the address bar that redirects somewhere else.

                                                Vlad what algorithm should Orion use to surface it.

                                                see above ^

                                                Vlad this has only 3 upvotes

                                                5 now :​)

                                                        No one is typing