Comment 101 for bug 956618

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #98)
> I don't think this is ESR material as it's a new behavior not fixing a
> regression.

In view of 33 votes here and the quantity of bugs reported against autocomplete result sorting algorithm, I find that evaluation nitpicking. While in a strictly technical sense, this might not be a regression, it's actually worse:

1) Once upon a time we delivered a feature which apparently has never worked as intended and required by inherent design. That's a significant failure which shouldn't have to wait any longer when it's finally fixed 9 years after being reported.

2) We have only recently exposed this problem significantly more by expanding the scope of recipient search for certain scenarios. So, as seen from numerous reports, users are now more affected by this design problem, because of the changes made in recent version. Technicalities aside, that looks like a de-facto regression to me (as confirmed by users saying "it used to work until recently but now it fails").

I don't see any risks coming from this straightforward patch, except that we're undermmining popularityIndex a bit more again, but this works on exactly the same terms and conditions as Bug 970456 so there's nothing new here.

So I still think this 5-line-patch should land on ESR.