How does the URL completion in adress bar work?
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So when you start typing something in the adress bar (e.g. "b"), the browser will suggest and display a completion (e.g. "bbc.com"); this is a feature that has been around in browsers since the stone age (roughly). What I'd like to know is some details on how Vivaldi does this, specifically how it decides between possible adresses to suggest as completions. I notice this seems to have changed slightly in some recent updates (causing me to have to relearn some muscle memory for visiting common sites), and now I'm curious.
Some observations: bookmarks often appear as suggestions; I think it remembers the first unique thing you typed (e.g. if you've typed "blah.com/thingy" and then later type "bl" it will always suggest "...ah.com/thingy" as a completion); I think it used to "learn", so it would change the first suggestion to whatever you most often typed (e.g. after typing in "blah.com/foo" sufficiently many times, the suggested completion to "bl" would change to "...ah.com/foo"), but it seems this is no longer the case.
Does anyone (devs in particular) have any useful knowledge to share?
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It will suggest anything Typed, Bookmarks, or History.
If it's showing anything that you haven't visited before it is using search suggestions from whatever search engine you have set as the default. That is if you have the option to allow search suggestions in address field enabled.
Check your settings.
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@mdnjou You misunderstand. I'm asking what makes it choose one possible suggestion over another, e.g. if I type "b", why does it complete to "blah.com/foo" instead of "blah.com/bar"? What are the weights given to different things (bookmarks, previously typed, etc.)?
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@Ketil I see. Then you probably need a developer indeed.
For me it appears to prefer bookmarks. Because here it's suggesting a bookmark that i just added today, even though i have visited many many other pages under the same domain regularly before. It also skips shorter/closer matches from history for example in favor of a match in bookmarks. Dunno if this behavior has changed at any point.
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@Ketil: URL completion algorithm is being worked on. It's partially broken right now. If you check "always prefer bookmarks" in settings then that's what you get first. If you are using a search engine that has a "Suggest URL" provided, then you will also receive search suggested URLs. The next list of items should be your typed history, and then history in general.
Generally, it's supposed to offer the shortest form a location you have been to (such as the top domain name), and also to prefer your most-visited sites. Some of these preferences are not working properly right now. -
@Ayespy Thanks, that more or less answers my question. Here's to hoping you work out the "partially broken" part soon!