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Firefox does not always apply address autocomplete

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1) I have 'youtube.com' in 'places.sqlite', yet Firefox does not use this entry for autocomplete. 2) I type 'youtube.com' in the address bar, I enter the site and get out of it. Then I start retyping "yo", "yout" ... but Firefox does not autocomplete it.

I have 5 entries in moz_hosts in SQLite Manager. 'youtube.com' gets only sometimes autocompleted. Other address usually work. But not always! This show a *marked instability* in "address autocompleting". I wonder why this happens after hundreds of Firefox verions ...

My Firefox version: 49.0.2

1) I have 'youtube.com' in 'places.sqlite', yet Firefox does not use this entry for autocomplete. 2) I type 'youtube.com' in the address bar, I enter the site and get out of it. Then I start retyping "yo", "yout" ... but Firefox does not autocomplete it. I have 5 entries in moz_hosts in SQLite Manager. 'youtube.com' gets only sometimes autocompleted. Other address usually work. But not always! This show a *marked instability* in "address autocompleting". I wonder why this happens after hundreds of Firefox verions ... My Firefox version: 49.0.2

All Replies (5)

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Hmm, not just YouTube, which appears to have stumped everyone in your post from two weeks ago (Firefox does not always apply address autocomplete).

Have you considered the possibility of database corruption? This extension often is recommended for database maintenance "just in case" but you also could experiment in a new profile (or perhaps you already have).

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

(As a footnote, I get youtube.com/ the moment I type the letter y, perhaps because I go there more often than any other site whose domain name starts with y (such as Yahoo). But that's just a note from a quick test, I normally keep autofill disabled and just use the autocomplete drop-down.)

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Thank you, but this is not the case. 1) I have built a new places.sqlite (with no effect). Not only that, I have restored the database that I keep as backup (from quite long ago) 2) You ignore point (2) which says that I type youtube.com in the address box, I enter and exit Youtube, then when I start re-typing it, I don't get autocomplete. 3) You ignore the fact that it works for other addresses (but even so, not always). This indicate a marked degree of instability in this section.

Now, what I have not done is to create a new profile. I hate doing such things because simply I have to set up again a hot of things!

But even if I do this, *it is still a Firefox bug* that has to be fixed and this is what the bug reports are for and why I reported it.

Anyway, it's not a big deal ... Firefox is a really great and helpful tool, so I can very well do with small bugs as these. Besides, very few S/W don't have bugs.

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aspis said

You ignore point (2) which says that I type youtube.com in the address box, I enter and exit Youtube, then when I start re-typing it, I don't get autocomplete.

I admit I probably don't understand what you mean by "enter and exit". If you mean visiting the site, then navigating to a different site, then testing autofill again, I don't get different behavior in that case. If you mean moving the cursor in/out of the word or up/down the autocomplete list, I don't understand why it's necessary to re-type it in that case. What am I missing?

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I speak plain and good English. I am also a programmer. It's impossible that I give not understandable IT information. So, if you don't undestand simple things like entering and exiting a site, then I don't think you are the right person to find solutions to IT problems in general. (If you google "entering a site" you get 350,000 results and with "exiting a site" you get 100,000 results)

Thank you anyway for your efforts.

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What you described was my first guess and I couldn't replicate the problem. That's why I thought it was a good idea to ask whether you might have meant something else. Spend a week here reading other peoples' questions and you'll be surprised by how malleable our language is.

Maybe it would help if you create a screencast of the problem.