Websearch trigger shouldn't require a whitespace

[anavarre]

Environment

• Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
• Desktop environment: Unity
• Qt version: 5.5.1
• Source: ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

Steps to reproduce

I tried to add a new Websearch trigger. To do so I performed the following steps:

• Name: Drupal project
• Trigger: p
• URL: https://www.drupal.org/project/%s

Then I launched Albert and typed p search_api.

Expected behaviour

Typingp search_api should bring me to https://www.drupal.org/project/search_api - I shouldn't have to add an extra white space to the trigger. It should be added automatically or add a delimiter (e.g. a column) between the trigger character and the string.

Actual behaviour

Typingp search_api brought me to https://www.drupal.org/project/%20search_api which returns a 404.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

What if you want neither a space nor a delimiter? Did you ever try =2+2? I use it pretty often. You see the point? Your suggestion is actually a reduction in flexibility. However you are right the actual behaviour is incorrect. There should be no space. Are you sure that you did not type two spaces by accident?

[ManuelSchneid3r]

@anavarre Btw: You could add the delimiter to your prefix. E.g. 'p:'.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

I just tried it on my machine, everything is fine. If you use 'p ' (note the space) as trigger it should work. I can't change this behavior because otherwise websearches with triggers without whitespace, e.g. wolfram alpha (=), would not work.

[anavarre]

What if you want neither a space nor a delimiter? Did you ever try =2+2?

I'm talking about Websearch triggers specifically. I can't see any valid use case without a white space or delimiter. Can you think of any?

My point is that whatever the default behavior is, it shouldn't be on the end user to know what to do. For example, KDE's Krunner has a web shortcut applet that lets you choose either the white space or column as a delimiter. I can totally sort this out myself but I'm trying to think about improving the UX for all.

[anavarre]

Didn't see your last comment before I posted.

I can't change this behavior because otherwise websearches with triggers without whitespace, e.g. wolfram alpha (=), would not work.

If there's a technical blocker I understand.

[ttys3]

@anavarre I think we should fix it in the websearch plugin, not here

albertlauncher/plugins#45

[githorse]

Alfred, Chrome, Firefox, DuckDuckGo, etc. assumes a whitespace after the web search trigger. Actually I really like how, say, Firefox and Chrome work here, where I type the trigger (gi for google images), press space, and then a little tag ([Google Images]) shows up at the left of the search bar to show me what "search engine" I'm using.

Websearch is definitely violating the principle of least surprise here out of the box. Took me a minute to figure out why searching for "Software Manager" only showed "Stack Overflow" instead (with trigger so). I agree the flexibility of using a custom delimiter (:?) is nice. Maybe this could be a configurable option for websearch?

Agreed this sounds like it probably belongs in websearch issues, so I posted there.

[githorse]

Still really confused about how this is supposed to work. I find the behavior kind of baffling. I have the following triggers defined:

trigger	search engine
g	Google
gi	Google images
d	Dictionary.com
ds	Dark Sky

None of my triggers include any explicit whitespace.

Here are my results:

search	result
g cheese	Google search " cheese"
gcheese	Google search "cheese"
gi cheese	Google images search " cheese"
gicheese	Google images search "cheese"
d cheese	(nothing happens)
dcheese	Dictionary.com search "cheese"

I still find it bizarre after a year of using Alfred that the way I'm supposed to use it is to type gcheese, without the space; this is hard to read, counterintuitive, and inconsistent with the standard used by all competitors. I'm also completely baffled why d cheese doesn't work at all while g cheese (kinda) does ...

[ManuelSchneid3r]

I know its not that intuitive but forcing to make the space mandatory narrows down the featureset. Think of file path triggers.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

Rather think of my personal trigger '=' for wolfram alpha. A valid use case. It's a feature not a bug.