Auto-complete for type-in addresses

Why does it not work all the time?

[tedster]

This is a weird little thing I'd like to understand better. Most urls that I type in will bring up auto-complete suggestions. And if I've been there before, the full url I want is one of the choices.

But for some urls, this never happens, even on my own sites. So what's the difference?

[vkaryl]

I USED to have that happen - when I was an IE user.

FireFox gives me REAMS of choices. Never misses a one....

[tedster]

This is happening in Opera - so I'm a bit baffled. Yes, FireFox is good but it's currently my #2 browser for all kinds of reasons.

[lorax]

Yeah I noticed that too. Could it be the length of time from when you last typed (actually typed rather than selected) the URI?

[tedster]

I thought the same thing - but it's easy enough to test. No, the same URL i just typed in 5 minutes back still doesn't show in the auto-complete options.

I'm a bit suspicious of HTTP headers right now - will investigate.

[kaled]

1) There is definitely a bug in IE and this feature sometimes doesn't work. The problem usually clears itself when you're not looking.

2) Sites not in the history are not suggested and the history is cleaned periodically.

3) If you include http:// then you must be consistent with your use of www.. This gets confusing since it will suggest www sites even if you don't type in www so you may not be consciously aware of inconsistencies.
I think this is part of the problem, but I don't spend time dwelling on MS bugs if I can help it.

Kaled.

[tedster]

I agree that IE is whacky - I'm seeing this behavior in Opera 7.51 and got curious. No big investigation here, but just wondering about it.

[TheDave]

I think it's related to disk access and CPU use. I noticed that after defragmenting, the list loads in a split second. I've also noticed that the list will struggle to load if the CPU is under a lot of pressure, and just seems to time out after a while.