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Firefox address bar

wiki.tilde.institute

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Re: Firefox address bar

#122

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…

The same is available in Chrome. I made a list of shortcuts I use here [0] -- copying a few favorites below:

   shortcut: "aw", lets you type: "aw s3", "aw iam", etc.
   https://console.aws.amazon.com/%s

   shortcut: "amzn", searches the retail side
   https://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=%s

   shortcut: "gm", searches through gmail (change the 0 if you use multiple accounts)
   https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/%s

   shortcut: "maps", searches google maps
   https://www.google.com/maps/search/%s/

   shortcut: "img", searches google images
   https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%s

   shortcut: "wp", goes directly to the article if it exists
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s

   shortcut: "yt", searches youtube
   https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s
[0] https://github.com/gregsadetsky/custom-search-engines

Re: Firefox address bar

#123

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…

this is just the search engines feature on chrome...

Re: Firefox address bar

#124
post #104
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Firefox's best kept secret. To this day I cannot fathom anyone willingly switching from Firefox to Chrome/Edge/any other Chromium-based browser. There are so many tiny features that are useful at least to myself, while a minor JavaScript performance advantage isn't something that important in the grand scale of things.

And then there’s tree style tabs. But actually I moved to Chrome due to how many issues I ran into with tree style tabs due to firefox not letting do its thing

Well, in case you decide to move back, give Sidebery a try. I switched a while back haven't had any issues.

Re: Firefox address bar

#125
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this in Chromium as well. So it might be Chromium's best kept secret too.

As far as I know, you can do it in all major browsers (probably not safari though)

There's a plugin that does this for Safari: https://apps.apple.com/app/keyword-search/id1558453954

Re: Firefox address bar

#126
post #90
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Firefox's best kept secret. To this day I cannot fathom anyone willingly switching from Firefox to Chrome/Edge/any other Chromium-based browser. There are so many tiny features that are useful at least to myself, while a minor JavaScript performance advantage isn't something that important in the grand scale of things.

Funny enough, I just posted on Mastodon looking for recommendations of other browsers to try. While I love the flexibility and openness that Firefox brings, there is a resource issue for me on my macbook pro. I have to spend a lot of time in Google Meets for work, and video conferencing via Firefox seems to redline the computer... It sounds like a jet engine and I wind up thermal throttling to the point that my machi…

I wonder if Google would have any vested interest in making Meets a bad experience in Firefox... No, it must be Firefox that's wrong!

Re: Firefox address bar

#127
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.

If you have the focus in the address bar and press Tab, Firefox puts you into search mode (while retaining focus in the address bar) using your default search engine. Is there something missing?

Re: Firefox address bar

#128
post #119

All I want for this dumb thing is to * correct ttps:// to https:// * stop searching internet for local hostname I type into the bar

Also: Show the full URI in the address bar. For some reason, firefox thinks it's cool to hide the protocol section when visiting http pages. Thankfully, it still shows https, an improvement over Chrome's mess of a UI.

Re: Firefox address bar

#129
post #87

You can also tweak the behavior via `about:config` to emphasize the types of results you care about. I like to set `browser.search.suggest.enabled` to `false` to keep it from showing search suggestions since I almost exclusively want to either type in my own search term or go back to a previous webpage I've visited.

The proper end user settings for this are currently in about:preferences#privacy (also linked to from about:preferences#search where most users would probably expect them). We have a myriad of about:config prefs affecting the address bar that are hard to keep track of and understand even for Firefox engineers (e.g. because the term "suggest" is overloaded), so I'd avoid recommending about:config to end users even amo…

The UI doesn't let you turn off searching from the address bar. It does let you choose to have a separate search box, but that doesn't seem to alter the address bar's behaviour. And when you do disable search with about:config the prompt still reads "Search with Bing or enter address".

Re: Firefox address bar

#130
post #80

One thing I'm missing is able to copy the URL of many tabs. As soon as you were able to select multiple tabs for making bookmarks I just assumed that you could ctrl+c and get the urls in plaintext. But doesn't seem to be that easy.

That would be a job for a tab extension, wouldn't be? Like Tree Style Tab.
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