Searching for stuff, either in your own history or on the web, is an integral part of the browsing process. The UI for searching is important to a great user experience. For us, that UI is part of what we call the Awesomescreen. Firefox Desktop has an Awesome bar, we have an Awesomescreen. Look for these changes in Firefox 44.
New Search Suggestions from Your Search History
Previously, if you opt into search suggestions, we only showed you suggestions from your default search engine (if your default search engine supports it). Now we can also show you things you’ve searched for in the past on your mobile device. These suggestions from your search history are denoted by a clock icon. Anthony Lam designed the shiny new UI you’ll see below.
We’ve also updated the layout and styling of the search suggestion ‘buttons’ to help you spot the one you want faster and make the whole process easier on your eyes. 😉
We believe in user choice and control, so this is controlled by a separate setting. If you don’t like, you can just turn it off without losing suggestions from your preferred search engine. Simply go to Settings > Customize > Search > “Show search history” and uncheck the checkbox. Likewise, if you dislike suggestions from search engines, you can disable that without losing suggestions from your own history. For that, go to Settings > Customize > Search > “Show search suggestions” and uncheck that box.
New saved searches on phone
New saved search suggestions on tablet
Updated Permissions Prompt
We’ve update the prompt to be feel more modern and integrated with the browser. You may have noticed that the doorhanger prompts recently got a makeover, courtesy of my colleague Chenxia.
New permissions prompt for opting into search suggestions