Bangs (work in progress)

Status: nothing on this page is a design. It records what the maintainer wants and what's wrong today, so it isn't lost. When this work starts, rethink the whole experience from scratch, deeper than the notes below, and rewrite this page as decisions get made.

How bangs work today

Bangs come from Helium (helium/core/add-native-bangs.patch and helium/ui/bangs-ui.patch). Typing !w cats in the address bar searches Wikipedia for "cats".

• The list is a file, bangs.json, downloaded from Helium services by components/search_engines/template_url_bang_manager.cc. It's behind the "Allow downloading the !bangs list" setting. When that's off, only a copy already in the browser's cache is used.
• Each bang becomes a search engine entry (a TemplateURL with a bang_id), the same kind of entry as the site search shortcuts in Settings.
• A bang works at the start of the query (!w cats), and in the middle or at the end (cats !w) once a space or Return follows it.

What the maintainer wants

Editable bangs

• A settings page that lists the bangs rac is using.
• Users can edit any bang, delete it, and add their own.
• Edits survive updates to the downloaded list. A deleted bang stays deleted, an edited one keeps the user's version, and the user's own bangs stay, even when a new bangs.json arrives.

A better address bar experience

Today, typing a bang at the end of a query (cats !w) still shows "Google search" in the address bar, plus a badge for the bang. That's wrong: when a bang is there, the search isn't a Google search. The fix isn't just the label. Rethink how bangs look and behave in the address bar as a whole.

Questions for the design

• Should the user's edits be stored as changes on top of the downloaded list (added, changed, deleted, keyed by the bang's trigger), so updates merge cleanly? What happens when an update changes a bang the user edited?
• Should the editor build on Chromium's existing site search settings, which already add, edit, and delete shortcuts, or be its own page?
• What should the address bar show at each moment: while typing a bang, with the bang at the start versus the end, and when the bang doesn't exist?
• How should bangs relate to the command bar (phase 5) and to Chromium's keyword search, which also uses the address bar?
• What happens with Helium services off: are the user's own bangs still available? (They should be; they don't need the network.)
• Does it cost anything when nobody uses bangs? Loading and matching the list must not slow typing in the address bar.