Most users who have tried one of the beta versions or release candidates of Firefox 3 like the new location bar also called the awesome bar. A group of users however who openly express their opinion about the new location bar in the announcement “Firefox 3 location bar just became almighty” on Mozilla Links does not like the behavior of that new bar at all and prefer the old ways.
Now there is always a group that prefers the old ways simply because they are used to it. Talk to your parents or other elderly people and you will notice that they believe that many things have been better in the past and turned to the worse in later years.
I was able to identify two main points of criticism. The first is the mix of bookmarks and history items that are displayed when typing in words in the location bar. Some users do not want their bookmarks to appear in that list. The second complaint is the results window that opens when results are found in the location bar. Many users think it’s to big and ugly.
Here are some comments from users about the new location bar:
I just downloaded the beta and started using version 3, and this new bar is the worst implementation imaginable of what might actually be a reasonable idea. (I would have to see a good implementation before I can decide on that last part.)
I type in “ne”, and it sorts “slashdot-NEws for NErds”, and “groklaw.NEt”, and a few other things, BEFORE “NEws.google.com”.
If I WANTED slashdot, I would have typed “sl”. If I WANTED groklaw, I would have typed “gr”.
Do the people who design these things even type at all when they use the browser, or do just they think they are helping out old people who don’t know how to use a mouse with fancy icons?????
That AWFULBAR is so unbelievably bad – this add on at least makes it look better; but the algorithm and arrogance of the developers made me revert back to FF2. I may dump Firefox altogether. I know that some people will like the new bar, but totally outrageous to stick it on everyone. There will be MANY MANY people who would otherwise use FF that will swear off it now – there will be many embarassing moments as this algorithm BOLDLY displays unexpected results/history in public/group presentations, family situations, etc. Mark my words – this new feature will be the single most important event in the downfall of Firefox/Mozilla.
It is possible to make the Firefox 3 location bar look more like the old location bar of Firefox 2 which would at least remove the second complaint. The oldbar add-on changes the style of it to resemble the old location bar. It still uses the Firefox 3 algorithm to search through bookmarks and history.
There does not seem to be a preference for now that makes it possible to disable the bookmarks from being included in the search when entering characters in the location bar.
Do you like the new location bar or do you prefer the old one ? Let me know.
Related posts:
- All you need to know about the Firefox 3 Location Bar
- Show Location Bar Results when correcting typos in Firefox 3
- Remove the Location Bar Star in Firefox
- Make Firefox Search For Terms With Periods In The Location Bar
- Disable Bookmarks in the Firefox 3 Awesome Bar
- Change the Firefox Location Bar Search Engine
- Change the number of results in the Firefox 3 location bar
- Disable Location-Aware Browsing (Geolocation) In Firefox
I like it, basically if the others don’t like it tell them to get back to IE, apparently opera has that too now
Wow, I actually thought that the new bar was a great idea, even when it was still in early beta and looked quite horrible. It was actualy really useful.
I have mixed feelings. When I start typing an url it disturbs me, old way was better and faster. But when I don’t remember url it helps.
The Opera Quick Find is a much better solution. Being able to search for any word that has appeared on a page is just very useful.
Yes, I like it and don’t have any complaints about it.
Well I don’t know, but when i’m typing “ne” in my bar (firefox 3 RC3 on mac), first result is “news.google.com” and slashdot is not mentioned (even being in my bookmarks).
Cheers,
Ran 2 computers on FF3 RC2 for a week and switched back. Then I tried RC3 and I switched back last night.
I understand there may be a majority who like þhe new bar, but don’t be hard on the people who liked its old functionality.
I can’t stand the fact that my bookmarks show up with my history. And in a random order too! At least give the die-hard long-time users the option of disabling the new “algorithm” and then we won’t mind having to “suffer” with a third party extention to return the location bar to its original look as the only change we have to deal with.
And for anyone who thinks myself and all the others who don’t like the new bar are crazy, don’t forget “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”! (Example: all the people who don’t mind Windows Vista – AKA the “majority” who get it pre-installed on their new PCs – and all the people who don’t like it and are perfectly content with XP – AKA the “minority”, but still a significant group)
Think I’m one of the few users who _does_ appreciate this new behaviour :P I always use it to open bookmarks (way faster than clicking and searching in subfolders) and it’s very easy to make combinations of keywords, parts of the url, tags etc… within your history and bookmarks.
I guess most of the complaining users do have some obscure p0rn links in their bookmarks which they don’t want others that are using their pc to see ;) But nevertheless it should be a useful improvement to let users choose which items to show in the url bar (only history, only bookmarks, or mark bookmarks individually to not let show).
Stupid complaints from ignorant people, It’s FIREFOX, you don’t like something? write an extension, change it and shut the hell up!
I mean, if it was a browser like IE or opera that are so strict in things, I WOULD complain, but is FireFox, you can change virtually everythhing about it, thats what makes it si wondefull.
Some people act like the have to use the browser as they download it.
For what it’s worth, lots and lots of people are switching back from Vista to XP. Microsoft wouldn’t need to count XP sales as Vista sales if that weren’t the case.
As a Safari user (and will be for quite some time), I’m drooling over the awesome bar. My parents? Maybe not so much, but I don’t think they’d be bothered by it.
If you’re browsing sites you don’t want your family to see, don’t keep them as bookmarks. Don’t keep them in your history (use something like a ‘private browsing’ feature that doesn’t save history, cookies, etc. within a session).
In fact, don’t use a single user account on a shared PC. Make several accounts, one for each family member. They’re restricted to their own profiles, problem solved.
If you’ve got someone looking over your shoulder as you type, and you haven’t cleared your history of embarrassing sites, be prepared to type quickly. :)
Not sure if you guys are aware, but the Location bar uses a frequency-based weightage algorithm to “know” whether what keywords you type is the URL you want. I give an example.
Supposing you have two URLS:
http://www.download.com/ ; and
http://www.abc.com/download
If you happen to access the latter URL quite often, typing “dow” initially may show you the first URL on top of the list, followed by the second URL. However, as you consistently choose the second URL, it actually has an internal counter that keep tracked of what keywords you entered in is mapped to which preferred URL.
In technical terms, if you use SQLite Manager extension, you will notice that in places.sqlite file, there is a table called “moz_inputhistory”, and in there there are 2 columns “input” and “use_count” that is used together to let Firefox “guess” which URL you intend to visit based on the “use_count” number to the URL mapped to the value at “place_id”.
In summary, it is expected that the location bar may not work as expected, but you got to “train” it over a period of time. To me, the location bar has immense productivity benefits over the initial hiccup of trying to search the correct URL for a newly-inputted keyword.
Put me in the ‘I like it’ category. Its intention is to make it easier to recall a site you have been to and perhaps forgotten and it serves that purpose fully.
The ‘embarrassing moment’ thing can perhaps perhaps be awkward but to be honest the sole act of bookmarking porn or incriminating sites is dangerous in itself, whether they show up in the bar is only an additional ‘worry’.
As for the poor results returned thing I haven’t seen that, for me it looks like its being sorted by start of the url.
i agree. i DO NOT like it and i will not upgrade to it. c’mon developers, give us a break. arrogantly defending and rationalizing it just makes some of us very hostile.
from a creative perspective it is a beautiful thing and i say rock-on. but from a choice perspective i say please don’t make us go where we don’t want to.
that is my opinion what is wrong. being forced to use and accept something. the kde4 thing comes to mind in this regard also.
Quote “I just downloaded the beta and started using version 3, and this new bar is the worst implementation imaginable of what might actually be a reasonable idea. (I would have to see a good implementation before I can decide on that last part.)
I type in “ne”, and it sorts “slashdot-NEws for NErds”, and “groklaw.NEt”, and a few other things, BEFORE “NEws.google.com”.
If I WANTED slashdot, I would have typed “sl”. If I WANTED groklaw, I would have typed “gr”.
Do the people who design these things even type at all when they use the browser, or do just they think they are helping out old people who don’t know how to use a mouse with fancy icons????? ”
It adapts to your selections with time. If you, just a few times, scroll to news.google.com it will start showing it up as the top result. Believe me i did not like the new bar initially either but once you use it you’d realize how much better it is from the earlier one.
With these huge amount of complaints, is this features mandatory of just optional?
The feature cannot be changed. As you can see in the comments on my site we have users who do not want to use the new location bar and users who like it.
A fair solution would be in my opinion to provide a config parameter to exclude bookmarks from being included in the local search which should be disabled by default.
Users who do not like the behavior could then change the value of the parameter.
It’s on record that when there is an introduction of a new feature in a software, it would be worshiped by the major part of the users, but it would be hated as well by a minority group. I think that Firefox will never die because of its strong community and its users are fond of it. I even think that due to this awesome bar, there will be a remarkable rise of the number of users, that at least would equalize the current one. ;)
How to Disable “Smarter” Address Bar in Firefox 3
Disable URL Search in Location Bar of Firefox 3
The “smarter” address bar might be help for some people.if you want to disable follow this.
The first step, in the address bar, enter in
about:config
It should give you some warning. Just disregard it.
In the search bar, enter:
browser.urlbar
Next, change the browser.urlbar.maxRichResults integer to 0.
(Double click and enter in 0 instead of current number)
browser.urlbar.autofill to false!
What is so difficult about adding a checkbox in options to disable the autofill features of the new location bar so it works as it does in FF 2?
Any big changes to UI in an established product should be programmed with the option to disable them so that users who prefer the existing UI aren’t penalized (IMO).
well, in response to your first quote, the awesome bar supposedly sorts it via frequency of use and alphabetically, so, it might be just that the guy used slashdot and groklaw more often than google news to be put above google news.
I personally like it, i like how it shows both the title of the page and the website url and that it searches both, but i really dont _need_ it, i rarerly type a url of a website manually, for blogs, i usually use google reader, and most other websites i frequent are on my speed dial extention in firefox, so i open them via alt + [number].
In reply to the comments by:
darkkosmos says, June 14th, 2008
… basically if the others don’t like it tell them to get back to IE…
And:
Alex says, June 15th, 2008
Stupid complaints from ignorant people, It’s FIREFOX, you don’t like something? write an extension, change it and shut the hell up!
———————————————————–
A polite suggestion:
Could you chill out a little and play nice?
Remarks like these don’t add anything of value to the discussion.
“It adapts to your selections with time. If you, just a few times, scroll to news.google.com it will start showing it up as the top result. Believe me i did not like the new bar initially either but once you use it you’d realize how much better it is from the earlier one.”
There’s another situation that this behaviour does not cover: what if I want to revisit an article I read at Slashdot, but I don’t remember the article title?
With FF2, I could type “sl” and see a list of Slashdot articles I’ve been to recently, quickly picking the one I want out of the list. With FF3, I’m reduced to typing in words that were probably in the article title and hoping that it will show up. To be fair, I’m almost certain to find it eventually this way, and it gives a better shot at finding pages that I found with some obscure Google search terms I don’t remember.
But for sites I visit frequently, or where I know the url, this new algorithm requires me to be more verbose AND returns less predictable (therefore useful) results.
I’m using FF2 and hoping it’s possible for a FF3 extension that restores the address bar functionality.
I like the Awesomebar – initially I did think I had to do more work to reach a URL I wanted, but over a period of time, it seems to learn your preferences and puts frequently used stuff right up top.
My Vote: I dislike it; just give users more control.
There is a way to disable the action, but at a cost if; once disabled you can not see anything you have typed in you address bar nor any history from the address bar
Type in the address bar
about:config
click that you will be careful and then find
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults set this to zero and it will disable the address bar suggestions. Then restart firefox
The suggestions are still there what browser.urlbar.maxRichResults dose is to show zero results thus in effect disabling it.
PEACE!
Jim
actually, there is a better one than setting maxrishresults to zero.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.urlbar.matchOnWordBoundary
try setting the browser.urlbar.matchOnWordBoundary to true, then, most of the time you should get news.google.com when you type ne, instead of getting slashdot.
I HATE it!
It’s not the looks, but the behavior!
I use to open many sites, by just typing the first 2 or 3 letters of the url, and the right url would be right there.
Now you get any url that just includes those letters ANYWHERE and they seem to be ordered by when you visited them, which is USELESS, since I ofcourse want to go to the front page for most sites.
USELESS CRAP and most unbeleivable is that they didn’t provide a freaking choice or what behaviour you want.
USELESS!
Setting browser.urlbar.matchBehavior to 2 should improve the behavior. This uses only word boundaries.
It actually forces you to type the complete url now. It is impossible to make it bring up the front page of a website, unless the front page is the only page you have even visited.
The normal visit to a website is to go to the front page and then click on the news, updates, games, videos, … all the new stuff they are featuring on the front page.
Now the FF3 url bar will ALWAYS give the the sub-pages as results instead of the front page, because they will always be the last ones that you visited.
The only thing it is good for now, is url history SEARCH, which really should belong in the url history window. For just typing your regular url’s and getting them quickly, it is now completely useless.
I know. I wanted to go to Lifehacker, started to type that in (I usually lust have to type the ‘l’ and down arrow), and got pages that I haven’t even thought of looking at for at least a few weeks.
What’s up with that?
Whenever I type in a url in the “awesome bar” and I press enter, nothing happens. I have to google the website and click the link to the website. Am I doing something wrong?
Most of the people who hate this feature are probably geeks and nerds like me. Our reaction: “wow, i type in xy and this stupid program wants to tell me where i want to go, like it knows better…”
The people who like it will think this: “wow, i type in pete’s name and this cool program firefox shows me his myspace url instead of some stupid website.”
ofc there are more people in the 2nd group
I hate it, I have to type half of a freaking URL before it comes up with the one I want. I don’t need to see the title of webpages I’ve been to before, I just need the URL.
I’m going back to 2.0 until they can give us an option to turn this off.
The font is huge and annoying as well.
Rejoice! Anyone who hates it, look up the add-on called “Oldbar”. It will at least fix it until Mozilla makes an option for people to turn it off.
You can turn the new address bar feature off — in the address bar type “about:config” and then press “enter”, scroll down to the “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults” item, select it and change the value to however many prompts you want it to display… I am sure there are other options as well, but if you want it off, or just want a couple items to drop down, this is a quick fix.
So to not have it search through your bookmarks just:
1> Type about:config in address bar
2> browser.urlbar.maxrichresult change to 0
browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped change to true
browser.urlbar.autofill change to true
Worked for me.
I’ve been using ff3 for all of an hour or so. Immediate impression is that the location bar is TERRIBLE from a usibility point of view.
All they need to fix it is to assign some logic to the algorithm – use the following criteria to order the results (highest at the top of the bar).
1.domain name (starts with letters typed)
2.page title (starts with)
3.page title (a word in the title starts with)
4.domain name (contains letters – ignore less than 3 letters)
5. I dont really care after #4
GIVE ME A BREAK! I type in 2 letters and the site I want comes in 3rd after 2 sites that contain those 2 letters in the page title. Rubbish. Rotten. An hour of usability testing with people of ALL levels of computer saviness should’ve spotted this. This is a microsoft grade cock-up.
“It adapts to your selections with time. If you, just a few times, scroll to news.google.com it will start showing it up as the top result. Believe me i did not like the new bar initially either but once you use it you’d realize how much better it is from the earlier one.”
I don’t really want to have to spend time with my address bar, teaching it that I want it to be like it was in Firefoz 2. It just seems kind of backwards. I understand that it is great for some people, but I just don’t use my bookmarks and favorites like that. The websites I frequent are on my bookmarks toolbar, which is brilliant. The bookmarks in the folder are ones that I just want to keep to remember.
It just doesn’t work for me personally. I’m glad lots of people love it though. Maybe one day I’ll see the light.
I love the new speed with Firefox 3, but at the cost of having to put up with the ’stupid location bar’. It’s so unproductive for me because I do my searches with the ’search bar’ on the right, not the address bar on the left. The ’stupid location bar’ has one of the most erroneously prioritized selection routines I’ve seen in a long time. Obviously if I start typing in news.g I probably want to go to news.google.com. To get google news to even show up under the ’stupid location bar’ forces me to type the entire url in. That’s just one example!
The rendering, interface, and performance gains are superb in Firefox 3, but that address bar is a total pain. At least it’s not too bad to get rid of it. The old bar extension and some config changes took care of the problem for me.
All the functionality I want in the URL bar is “starts with” compare done on all URLs previously visited.
I like weighting by number of visits.
I do not like “word” compares with “titles” – it’s a URL bar, not a title bar.
Oldbar: reverts the old appearance, does not revert the “search only URL” behavior (yet).
browser.urlbar.richResults: no longer a supported about:config option.
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults: to 0 no longer shows dropdowns.
Any tips?
HATE IT!!! I liked it just fine the way it was before, why couldn’t they have made this awesomebar a selectable option for people who like the old way? Now I have to find a way to uninstall FF3 without losing all my old bookmarks.
I HATE IT. It’s like people say: if I type “ne” I get all kinds of site that I don’t want first.
If I want to go to ebay I start typing ebay and it first list a whole lot of ebay items I looked at before. That’s not what I want, I just want to get the main page of ebay.
The old behaviour rocked, for so many different reasons I can’t list them all here. Just two:
1) readability. The new bar is really hard to read for me, rows don’t work very good for my poor eyesight, columns were waaaay better. Plus, the icons simply kills my eyes. I like my stuff simple!
2) keyword searching is great, but I should able to decide if I want to use it or not. For me, is a total waste of time. I should be able to turn it off.
Not to mention that it accesses a database, albeit fast, EVERY time I type something in the bar. Why is this an issue? I am a web developer, and often have 20+ ff windows open, plus photoshop, text editors, ftp clients, and such. I’ve got plenty of memory to spare, but only so much cpu power… FF used to be the lightest standard-compliant browser around. FF3 may improve rendering time and memory usage, but it hampered everything else in terms of speed…
within two minutes of installing FF3 i was looking for a way to disable that horrible ‘feature’. it is entirely too big and intrusive, and is not something i will ever use. i almost never use bookmarks, and if i do, it’s just to hold on to a page when i don’t have time to browse it fully. i go back to it later then delete the bookmark. i don’t want them jumping at me every time i try to type a URL.
what i like very much, however, is the new ability to assign aliases to bookmarks and open them quickly in the address bar. so i disabled autocomplete and added bookmarks plus aliases for the dozen or so sites i go to every day. works great, and works silently :)
if you set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to True, then you get a plain old address bar again…
A major change to the interface should have an option to change its behaviour.
Oh for the days when Firefox was small and quick, might as well use IE these days!
My advise is if you do not like you HAVE to tell Mozilla, and tell them WHY just don’t ell them you hate it
This is their user feedback we link:
http://hendrix.mozilla.org/
Again tell them what you don like about it, and what you want it to do,
I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!
Can’t disable this fucking shit. The addon only makes it LOOK like the old location bar. It needs to BEHAVE like the old location bar. Developers of firefox are just idiots. They don’t give the users chance to choose what they want to use. I thought this open source thing would higher up the quality of software but firefox developers are starting to behave like microsoft.
I’d like more space on the location bar to see the site address. Is there a way to remove the bookmark star and the RSS feed button? What a waste of useful space for things where there are shortcut keys to do the job.
I really don’t like that there isn’t an option to change this, and I will be writing feedback to Mozilla about it.
everything is OK except that annoying new location bar.(which I raelly hate so immediately return to my FF2)
can’t they keep it simple like FF2, that autofill function just getting on my nerves.
and included bookmarks in the bar, what’s the point then for having bookmarks.
I just hate these 2 new features. I planned on leaving Safari for Firefox 3, it won’t happen until I can fix this mess.
Hopefully Mozilla will add an option to go back to a regular behavior in a near future.