Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox address bar

wiki.tilde.institute

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 332 posts

Re: Firefox address bar

#311

Post by ekimekim »

marccoup wrote: post #163
sam_goody wrote: post #153

It used to be that search and address were two different fields in the browser UI. That helped - if typed in the address bar, you were probably looking for something in an address [so if you typed potato, it could search for a url in your local history with the word potato], and not for something in a web page. Then Google realized you could combine the two; this makes it less likely you will use a competing search,…

Firefox does have a setting to add the search bar back if that’s your jam, you can turn off address bar search suggestions in the settings too. If you turn off address bar search suggestions then the address bar will still search anything you enter that’s not a url on your chosen default search engine though. You might be able to turn off that behaviour in about:config

Yep you can. I have mine configured so that it will only search when I use one of the search prefixes. So to search on google I type "g example.com", and this is unambiguous with actually wanting to go to example.com.

Re: Firefox address bar

#312

Post by chii »

chaxor wrote: post #293
matheusmoreira wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is increasingly unfriendly to power users. Wouldn't surprise me if they got rid of this feature someday because they have statistics showing few people use it.

Power users are firefox's main demographic. I see this so much so, it's to the point that If I see you're using something else, I assume you're not a developer, and you're likely not a power user.

i do feel chrome devtools is just edges out firefox's

Re: Firefox address bar

#313

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

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…

Yup. I use d to search Onelook Dictionary.

Re: Firefox address bar

#315

Post by ykonstant »

nashashmi wrote: post #240
guptarohit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the club! The day I knew about it and till know I don’t think I ever clicked in search bar to search. This shortcut is very helpful! In similar context, Ctrl+w for closing tab.

Alt F4 is for duplicating the window with all of its tabs. /s

It may take a while, be patient!

Re: Firefox address bar

#316

Post by ttepasse »

peppermint_gum wrote: post #63
frankjr wrote: 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…

> Even Safari is miles ahead of Chromium in this regard. I hate Safari's address bar. One visit to a mistyped address can ruin your suggestions forever, that typoed URL will be always preferred over the correct one. Firefox's address bar is indeed great. Always works flawlessly.

You can delete the offending URLs from Safari’s history and they won’t show up in the suggestions anymore. I only found that out while experimenting after years of frustration. In a perfect world, of course, such features would have a small UI affordance like a context menu entry for the address bar.

Re: Firefox address bar

#317

Post by IIsi50MHz »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #173
sbjs wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And rightfully so. Why maintain a feature for a small minority? Let them fork and maintain it themselves.

The danger of this is obvious. Everyone is there for a different minority used feature. By caring only about the feature used by the majority, you are actually satisfying no one. That’s why product managers use persona on top of metrics. Nice products have niche features and some kind of personality. You don’t want to overfocus on them but stripping them all is a losing move.

WordPerfect and Quattro Pro (now WordPerfect Suite, I think) seem to persist due catering to special needs of law firms. Catering to some niche users can keep you afloat despite an otherwise market-dominant competitor.

Re: Firefox address bar

#318

Post by IIsi50MHz »

millzlane wrote: post #275
kulahan wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, this was a fun fact to learn. Had no idea they stopped using it. Thanks for sharing!

It will always be the awesomebar to me. And I'll never stop calling the hamburger menu, The Hamburger Menu.

(-: Although…I've had the most success with guiding new users by calling it "the thing that looks like an air vent" or "a funny little group of three horizontal lines".

When I called it "the hamburger menu", I got confused stares. Maybe if the top line looked more like the top of a hamburger bun… although why a hamburger should mean "menu" is still a bit odd.

Re: Firefox address bar

#319

Post by IIsi50MHz »

ttepasse wrote: post #316
peppermint_gum wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even Safari is miles ahead of Chromium in this regard. I hate Safari's address bar. One visit to a mistyped address can ruin your suggestions forever, that typoed URL will be always preferred over the correct one. Firefox's address bar is indeed great. Always works flawlessly.

You can delete the offending URLs from Safari’s history and they won’t show up in the suggestions anymore. I only found that out while experimenting after years of frustration. In a perfect world, of course, such features would have a small UI affordance like a context menu entry for the address bar.

That woud be nice. Or respond to the Delete key. I tried pressing that, Option-Delete, Shift-Delete, and by then I'd spent more time than it would have taken to move the highlight onto the row I wanted. (>.<)

Re: Firefox address bar

#320

Post by IIsi50MHz »

tonylemesmer wrote: post #52

My favourite find of the past 12 months is Ctrl+L which gives the address bar focus so you can begin typing.

I'd almost forgotten about Ctrl-L. I used to use it all the time on Celeron work computers with IE, because I could open the browser, type Ctrl-L and an address, and press Enter before the toolbar finished drawing. I wouldn't even see what I had typed appear before the page I requested started loading! Think I also used it with Windows Explorer, after the IE integration…
Post reply on HN