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Firefox address bar

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Re: Firefox address bar

#211

Post by aftbit »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #208

Parade, here comes the rain. I hate who I've become these days, only ever complaining about stuff, but here we go: I find "^history search" to be actually and annoyingly useless because Firefox, like Chrome and seemingly every other browser, has unreliable, short-living browsing history. The times where I find myself trying to use the "^-search" in Firefox are always just a little bit after whatever I was searching f…

What do you mean by "history retention window"? My Firefox instance has history dating back to 2016 at least...

Re: Firefox address bar

#212

Post by bombolo »

perihelions wrote: post #6

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 has been available on kde for several years.

Re: Firefox address bar

#213

Post by eitland »

baby wrote: post #104
atomlib wrote: 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

So, if I understood you correct, you had issues with TST and instead of disabling TST, you went for Chrome?

Re: Firefox address bar

#214

Post by DangerousPie »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #208

Parade, here comes the rain. I hate who I've become these days, only ever complaining about stuff, but here we go: I find "^history search" to be actually and annoyingly useless because Firefox, like Chrome and seemingly every other browser, has unreliable, short-living browsing history. The times where I find myself trying to use the "^-search" in Firefox are always just a little bit after whatever I was searching f…

Interesting. I use ^history all the time and it has been working extremely well for me. It's the number one thing I miss every time I use Chrome.

Re: Firefox address bar

#215

Post by TeMPOraL »

bmacho wrote: post #23
perihelions wrote: post #6

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…

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".

There used to be a GUI for that. Then they removed it. The functionality is still sorta, kinda available, in varying and increasingly undiscoverable ways.

Last time I checked, you had to navigate to a search engine (and/or make a search with it?) and hope its author published some magic special microformat metadata that identifies it as a search engine - then Firefox would helpfully offer you an option to add it as a search engine, somewhere in the address bar. I don't remember if it had any indicator visible by default, or if you had to right-click the address bar first.

And now I learned they "improved" this once again - hiding the feature under a right-click on a search box.

It really seems like browser vendors want to soft-kill this options. I'm just not sure why, especially when it comes to Firefox.

Re: Firefox address bar

#216

Post by DangerousPie »

sfink wrote: post #196

It would be nice if the author could fix this page, since the examples are incorrect and do not work as written. You need a space after the magic character. Although I use it exactly as described (prefixing my search with the magic character followed by a space), it's not necessarily the best way to use it. If you can retrain your muscle memory, these shortcuts are better as suffixes. "% fish" will only show the open…

It works fine without spaces for me.

Re: Firefox address bar

#217

Post by aftbit »

archontes wrote: post #140
kibwen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm using Firefox right now. When I highlight in the bar and press tab, ONLY when the drop-down bar is showing, it moves the cursor down one to Amazon, which is not my default search engine, but the first one alphabetically. So that doesn't work. I also don't want to search my default search engine. I want tab to search for the panoply of websites that the omnibox will search. When I start typing ebay, I want "tab to…

I also remember missing that feature dearly when I switched from Chrome to Firefox. However, some time in the intervening decade, they've actually added that to Firefox! I can type "ebayesp32" and I end up on the eBay search page for "esp32". Perhaps there is a setting or about:config option that needs to be toggled? Many of Firefox's best features are thusly hidden.

Re: Firefox address bar

#218

Post by aftbit »

cobbaut wrote: post #190
adql wrote: 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

> stop searching internet for local hostname I type into the bar Yes, please. I have a separate address bar and search bar in Firefox, and it still insists on searching DDG for local hosts names when I type them in the address bar. Stop doing this. (The solution for now is to type http://localname/ )

Try "localname/" instead, though that will try https by default with my settings.

Re: Firefox address bar

#219

Post by robbyking »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #122
perihelions wrote: post #6

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…

And IIRC, Chrome copied this from Opera. It's a shame Opera never found its audience (or more specifically, a revenue stream), they pioneered a lot of browser features that we consider to be standard these days, like tabs and support for extensions.
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