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Firefox address bar

wiki.tilde.institute

31–40 of 332 posts

Re: Firefox address bar

#33

This isn't average user friendly. No one except nerds will remember these symbols. Why not simply make it so that typing !history ____ will search history, !bookmarks ___ will search bookmarks and so on? This at least stands a chance of being used more widely.

That's why there's a UI affordance for it: look at the bottom of the suggestions list.

These are just power user shortcuts.

Re: Firefox address bar

#35
post #28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wrote the same, with the same algolia example :D Do you remember if it was possible to edit or add custom search engines from GUI before? I remember having them, but I can't find it. Also it seems to me as a basic feature and not a "killer feature".

Right-click on a search box > "Add a Keyword for this Search". Edit: it then gets saved as a bookmark and you can edit it like any other.

I don't have that. Where? Algolia and google search boxes(? the input fields?) don't show anything like that.

edit: also if I modify a keyword for my opensearch/xml search engines in about:preferences#search , it won't show up as a regular bookmark. Also I can't even see the URL for those search engines.

Re: Firefox address bar

#36

I think this is the first time I've seen Firefox mentioned on the front page of HN and it's being praised instead of slated.

Firefox is the only browser here that gets praised even for periodic updates.

Followed by frequent calls for dumping Chrome in favor of Firefox.

Re: Firefox address bar

#37

The killer feature is that you can extend this with your own macros. E.g. if you want the address bar to recognize "hn " as a prefix keyword, and redirect "hn firefox address bar" to, say, Algolia — you simply create a bookmark with "Keyword": "hn" and "URL": " https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%s " (not actually a URL, don't click on it) – %s indicating where the macro parameter substitutes. Then "hn firefox address bar" ma…

Similarly you can run javascript programs on a site with a parameter from the url bar, if you want. For example you can make a bookmark with the URL

   javascript: document.body.innerHTML = "%s" + document.body.innerHTML
and add a keyword @addBefore and it will work. (Useless example, but it probably shows where and how the javascript runs.)

Re: Firefox address bar

#38
post #2

I don't think I've ever used these modifiers but Firefox's address bar, Awesomebar, is indeed awesome. Compared to the utter garbage that is Chromium's Omnibar, I can find any page I've visited within a few key strokes. Chromium, on the other hand, almost immediately forgets and you have to go to the actual History to find it. Even Safari is miles ahead of Chromium in this regard. I'm still convinced that crippling O…

All I want is tab to search. Actual, identical-to-omnibar tab to search.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox address bar

#39
A subset of the most personally useful modifiers work on Edge and I prefer the UI when using these in Edge.

^ to search for matches in your browsing history.

* to search for matches in your bookmarks.

? to search your search engine.

Re: Firefox address bar

#40
Why isnt there a way to fix history.

Say I have 50 sites about "headphones". I need to go through each of them to find thar particular one.

So I open them one by one, but they land on top again and polute the search results.. what makes searching difficult.

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