Firefox 3 Location Bar Controversy

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 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.

in FF2 if i typed a single word in the url bar, then it defaulted to use a google quicksearch (very handy not using any other search bar or toolrbar) ,
anyone knows how can i do this in FF3?

typing in the url bar a keyword, will default to a google search

How do you turn that shit off, its annoying as fuck.

Back to Firefox 2…it sucks b/c FF3 was great, but this was so f@#$ing annoying.

hi,

I have found that pssed websites that i have visited are being included when i type into the URL bar even though i have cleared my history. I presume this is because i have visted them more frequently than others.
Is there anyway to disable this smart bookmarks tracking feature?
Also, anybody know where places.sqllite is on the Mac? I cant find it anywhere!
Thanks
Chris

Back to FF2 for me. The idiotbar is completely unusable.

1. In the browser location bar type: about:config
2. type urlbar in the filter box
3. Look for the line that reads: browser.urlbar.MaxRichResults
4. Double click on that line — a box will pop up — change the integer to 10
5. Close the box
6. change browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to TRUE.
7. have browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled;true set to TRUE.
I seem to be getting the behavior I want which is auto complete the urls but only search through urls that I have typed in recently. It doesn’t include my bookmarks anymore.

I think the bar is silly. Autocomplete on any program offers the ability to DISABLE it in the preferences. Sure some people like it but for those that don’t like an Autocomplete of any kind (especially in the URL box) there should be a check box in preferences to disable it.

NO..I don’t want someone jumping on my computer seeing my web browsing habits or even all my bookmarks.

I was SHOCKED that there was no preference option to disable this annoyance. My bookmarks are personal….I DON’T want them ‘auto-displayed’. I went back to firefox 2,0 and am using IE more now.

back to ff2

There is a add-on for Firefox 3 that is constantly being improved to try and replicate Firefox 2’s location bar.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7637

So far it looks like FF2’s, and doesn’t sift threw your Bookmarks.

Please report any bugs, do not use the review spot to post them. As the rules say.

The “awesome” bar is such an imbecilic idea that it should be a “feature” in Internet Explorer. What the hell? Have some cockroaches from microsoft infected Mozilla? The new pseudobar is so horrifyingly bad and idiotic that other than sheer idiocy, sabotage can be the only explanation for its creation.

Oh my God. I can’t believe they have started to force stuff on users like MS. Are you serious that there is no way for me to keep it from displaying that stuff in the location bar? Actually, I would like to disable searching from the location bar altogether. Is there still a way to do that? This is terrible. There must be a saboteur on the Firefox dev team. That they named it “The Awesome Bar” is patronizing, too. Also, I had forgotten all the tweaking required to get it running smoothly. Sadly, I reset my about:config back to defaults, trusting they would have treated the main slowness issues. Nope. They were working on the Awesome bar. Well, I better go, running out of memory.

Kakkoii, it look better but some behavior still not the same as FF2.

DodolG: Of course not, It’s still a work in progress. But it’s getting there.

“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?”

I’m having the same problem as Tyler. I just disable all of my add ons so we’ll see if that helps.

Add one more to the ‘Awful Bar’ crowd. The update delivers the wrong results reliably, especially with rarely visited sites which don’t benefit from the learning function. The old, and simple, matching algorithm is much more reliable. And the display is crufty, displaying far more information than is relevant.

I’m running OldBar now, and testing out ways to make OldBar ignore my bookmarks (which is a lesser fault of the Awful Bar).

Also Bookmark organizing is worse than before, you can’t create a new bookmark folder when adding a bookmark.

Overall, greatly improved backend, worse UI. Kinda reminds me of Active Desktop.

We can ask for the old toolbar here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=407836

Just add a comment at the end of the page… maybe they’ll listen to our request!

Wow.. you guys are really getting worked up over this. In all honesty, I think it’s a great idea. A lot of the time I remember the title of an article I read, or just a portion of the title. Now I can easily get back to something without having to remember the site that I went to, or even without opening up my history.

I know that it is a little larger than average, but it IS a good idea, albeit slightly badly implemented.

@Adam Maas - When bookmarking, just click on the arrow and then the new folder button shows up.

After each BETA and RC of FF3 I’am back to FF2. In FF2 only 2 letters would suffice. I hate new behaviour.

Hrm, don’t think I agree with many of the posts who say ’suck it up or go back to IE or Safari’ or whatever, since those are both commerical/closed-source softwares. I think the whole point on where Firefox got popular was the ability to customize the experience to whatever degree the user wanted. For the most part, suggesting to go back to Firefox 2 is fine, but telling people to get over it or get out isn’t what the open-software movement is all about.

Install this plug-in people! There’s not much else you can do.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7637

I’ve updated it again with more features. It’s getting closer and closer to replicating FF2’s URL Bar.

Here’s my beef with the new location bar.

In Safari (both Mac & Win) and Internet Explorer (Win), if I type “flahute”, and the browser automatically routes to flahute.com … I don’t need to type in the full URI.

In FireFox, I type in “flahute”, and get a Google results page with anything having to do with flahute. But just to the right of the location bar is a Google search bar. If I wanted I search, I’d type in the search bar, not the location bar.

As a Mac user, Safari has been my primary browser for a long time, but I’ve always used FF for those pages which just aren’t quite Safari compatible … but behavior like this will prevent me from ever making the permanent switch.

You can solve with this addon!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7637

It really behaves like FF2 Address Bar!

/* GENERIC DISGRUNTLED COMMENT */

Why did they do this…. why????

Why would they do this? It is just terrible. I cannot navigate to anywhere I want to go by URL without typing the entire freaking thing. This is just ridiculous.

They have finally found an “improvement” that makes me want Opera instead.

I hate the awful bar with a passion. The search results are absolutely retarded.

[...] then there’s the location bar that has drawn heavy criticism because it auto-populates Web sites as you type in URLs. It is strange that Firefox 3 offers no way [...]

Don’t like the new location bar at all. This resembles all that crap were used to getting from M$ when they force us things and try to think on our behalf.

1. The mix of bookmarks in search is a horrible idea to be on by default and not having it optional.

2. The new style wastes a lot of space by showing the title of the website and then the address on different rows taking up 2 rows for one website.

3. It only shows 12 links and no scrollbar to enable showing more links. If you type a new URL 1 link always disappears if 12 is filled. Very annoying.

4. Why does there have to be that star on the location bar after links to bookmark a page? There’s already several options to do that. It takes up some additional space too and even looks ugly. No need to always fill everything with all kind of stupid icons etc. and add extra features no-one really needs.

The new location bar should be optional at best. And definitely not on by default and not forced on us by not allowing to select the old regular style bar.

“Why would they do this? It is just terrible. I cannot navigate to anywhere I want to go by URL without typing the entire freaking thing. This is just ridiculous.”

Exactly. That essentially kills the whole idea of having an address/location bar history for easy selection. As does the limitation to only 12 recent links visible without a scrollbar.

This is a horrible mistake from Firefox developers. Reminds of stupid Microsoft ideas.

Personally I think it’s just awful. Fair enough if people like it then allow it as an option but to have it forced on Firefox users is a bit extreme. I have sites that i regularly visit and it’s much easier to find them in my drop-down history from the URL bar than it is to trawl through bookmarks. The new URL bar just brings up a dozen random useless URLs every time I click the drop-down arrow. If I wanted to see my bookmarks, guess what? I’d open my bookmarks. Do I really want to be typing in something EVERY TIME I want to go to a site from my history? This should have been an EXTRA search bar that was optional or they should have made it optional to add the feature to the URL bar, they shouldn’t have integrated it irreversably with the URL bar. Why change something that’s not broken? They’ve tried to re-invent the wheel and failed miserably.

Its the inertia effect. People won’t accept new changes quickly. There will always be a lot of cribbing, complaining and crying before they actually accept it. And after accepting they start to praise it. Its a human nature. Noone can change it. The main things is the innovators should not consider such emotions since they are temporary.

Kudos for the Firefox 3 team. I am already loving it.

I personally don’t like it and searched for an off box, but didn’t find one so I went and Googled. Glad I am not the only one. I sent a comment to the Hendrix feedback link. Hope they are listening and add off option in future update.

Easy fix (apparently). In about:config, change the following settings:

browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped => true
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults => 0

Now no more searching your bookmarks from the URL bar.

Computers are very stupid. Everyone knows that. I don’t need an inferior intelligence trying to anticipate my next move and outguess my needs and goals. Kill the awsome bar and the homo that designed it.

The IdiotBar is incredibly bad. Back to FF 2 for me.

The main reason I hate it is that there is no option to turn it off!! I mean thats why i chose firefox over ie. You had control over the features. Then there is also the way it looks so ugly and doesnt work for me at all!

The only thing I really have trouble with is the visual representation. Two lines of text per result with different fonts. Basic typographic design principles get violated here. Thanks to the ‘oldbar’ add on, I’ll keep FF3.

btw: not everyone makes the pc the center of their life, so claiming to write your own extension and insulting people shows quite a strange view point.

I want to use a browser, not develop it. It’s just a tool for me and 99.995 per cent of the others. I’ve got already enough languages and syntax’s to keep in mind. And many users don’t know even one programming language.

“Computers are very stupid. Everyone knows that. I don’t need an inferior intelligence trying to anticipate my next move and outguess my needs and goals. Kill the awsome bar and the homo that designed it”

“The main reason I hate it is that there is no option to turn it off!! I mean thats why i chose firefox over ie”

Completely agree with both posts. Features like his should never be made mandatory. For all the lazy bastards on here that like it, good. For the rest of us, we like to have a choice.

I don’t like it.I used FF3 for about 1 day and switched back to FF2 because of the location bar.When they give us the option to use the FF2 style location bar then I will install it again

The ‘one click’ solution to revert URL bar to old style is Seth Spitzer’s add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

@Alf: Not really, that just changes the look.

This add-on by Kakkoii does a lot more than that oldbar add-on.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7637

I prefer old one. The new bar makes the computer busy by trying to show all “related” titles.

I’m with those who prefer the old Location Bar format. It’s simpler, yes, but more powerful.

Others have already outlined the two major issues I have with it:
-pulling up anything that contains the ’search string’ entered,
-two lines of text to each URL, adding to the size and visual complexity of the list.

I can agree with poster PB who said that this probably appeals to the less-expert user who usually doesn’t know exactly what they’re looking for and wishes their location bar to act as a google search, too.

However, it’s definitely an inconvenience to those who know the address they want and want to get there fast.

I like FF3 otherwise, and am very glad of the ‘oldbar’ add-on. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough and at least I’m not suffering visual overload from the extra information to sort through on typing in an URL.

Guys,
if you want to autofill the urls but only search through urls in your history,
what envoy said on June 19th worked for me as well, I had tried it before reading all these comments and I noticed that it works:
”
1. In the browser location bar type: about:config
2. type urlbar in the filter box
3. Look for the line that reads: browser.urlbar.MaxRichResults
4. Double click on that line — a box will pop up — change the integer to 10
5. Close the box
6. change browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to TRUE.
7. have browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled;true set to TRUE.
”
The only thing is 7. should read autofill not autocomplete.
try it.

actually what i just said doesn’t work on a “.org” url…

I can now officially say I hate this awesomebar.

It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if there just would have been an easy way to change it back. I would have expected the lack of options from MS, but sure didn’t expect it from Mozilla.
There are alot of people who will never hassle with all the add-ons and config tweaks required to make it familliar… too intimidating to the casual user.

Is Clippy working for Mozilla now? Very much a Microsoft feel to this.

All I’m asking for is an off switch so I don’t have to mess around with about:config.

[...] bar worked. I do not want to get into that deeply here but if you are interested you can follow the Firefox 3 location bar discussion at [...]

I like it. My computer is not toooo old, though. I imagine that if your computer was close to crashing, this bar would push it over the edge.

But I DO like it. I can type in the start of a url, a space, and then type in some of the end of a url, and the result I want floats to the top. The bookmarks are almost obsoleted.

I guess, yeah, it would be nice to be able to TOTALLY disable it in some obvious preference thing…

But… if you’re afraid that it will show something incriminating, you’ve got bigger problems than the size of your location bar. First up, you should learn how to cover your tracks properly (as the location bar won’t reveal anything that was hidden anyway, duh)…

I _don’t like_ the so called ‘awesome bar’ mainly because it is visually too crowded and thus less efficient for me. I would like to be able to go through the list quickly, as was the case in the former version.

Just typed ctrl+l -> example.com -> enter

Faster than my eyes could register

Ended up at anotherexample.com which was interesting but not what I wanted.

… Which is totally unacceptable btw. Been with FF since the time it was called Phoenix, but when programs start to take control from you it’s about time to replace them.

“Stupid complaints from ignorant people”
Alex

Thats rich coming from you…

“but is FireFox, you can change virtually everythhing about it, thats what makes it si wondefull.”
Alex

First off don’t be so ignorant, secondly learn to type, thirdly not everyone knows how to write an extension and lastly being able to change virtually everything is what makes it “si wonderfull”… so why are they taking the options away from you, making it less wonderful?

I simply hate that new location bar, it is awful and more importantly useless, confuses, and , and, and… In v2 the location bar was good, when I started to type in a link, it started with the shortest link starting with that, the new one seems to be unordered or displaying the most recent one or I don’t know, but it is very bad, as I am a developer and I am jumping between urls on the same server.

I hope it will be fixed or something…

The bar is a great freakin’ idea, but it’s been done completely wrong. It prioritizes the most recently visited pages that match in any way what has been typed, whereas it should first prioritize by the frequency at which one visits the matching pages.

I vote for the category of giving the user the options of the old and new behavior. I don’t want to “train” the darn thing. I trained my dog with biscuits for not peeing on the carpet. I can find my bookmarks and my history all by my little self. What I want is to sit down and go to the location bar and QUICKLY, with out the clutter, read my local newspaper, view the weather radar when a storm is coming, search for items at my local library, along with a couple of other things that total no more than 5. That is all. Wam Bam thank you ma’am. I don’t want the links on my desktop. I keep it clean. I appreciate the suggestion of listing issues with hendrix.mozilla.org. We should all do that. I love Firefox. I appreciate what they do for all of us. I just want my uncluttered convenience back.

I fucking hate the FF3 address bar. I hate how they cluttered up the damn bookmarks too. (I open the bookmarks menu and there are 10 fucking entries before my bookmarks goddamn being. Who is the asshole who thought this up.)

I like the new location bar. Earlier I had a problem if I knew a part of the URL but not the starting part.

Like “ssl” or “pine” or “crypto” will bring up all urls with that part.

Maybe they should put URLs that start with the given characters first (higher priority).

btw, FF3 is slower, I think, not recommending it to family for that reason.

I have a problem with it, because webbrowsing, for me, is a thing of habit. Ttherefore I want FireFox (my main browser) to stay the same. It’s ok for Opera to be inventive and clever, but that’s because I don’t use that daily.

In addition Opera’s location bar, at first glance, seems to be even cleverer, since it also searches the content of the sites in ones history.

However that’s not the point. It would have been nice if FireFox had had an option for those who want things to stay the same.
The new location bar may be more user-friendly to some, in that they don’t have to remember what sites had what content; but for the old users, a change of what they’re used isn’t very user-friendly (in the beginning at least).

The great sorrow, though, is that I (and others) will probably get used to this new feature and learn to either like or just not loathe it. And I hate that.

Oh yeah, it also helps along the degeneration of people’s mnemonic abilities, as they won’t have to remember website urls anymore.

And another ‘anti’ voice here!

I say, with regret, that I “upgraded” to FF3 today, after constantly being bugged to do so via pop ups and notifications of some of my add-ons.
I then spent an entire 6hrs trying to find ways to get rid of the -I find- most annoying new features.
1st of all: the AwfulBar
Here’s how I fixed it: go to mozilla and download Old Location Bar 1.3 (NOT oldbar)
It doesn’t revert things to FF2 version completely, but it appears to be the next best thing out there so far.

2nd gripe: the stupid combined back/forward buttons, which also took away the drop down menu for page history
Fix: go to mozilla and download NoUn Buttons
Read the reviews if you can’t find the icons etc after install…there are some posts with instructions.
This too will make it the closest to FF2 I could find so far.

Now if someone came up with a way to fix my 3rd gripe, I’d be more than happy:
Click on ‘bookmark this page’ and you get an unmovable pop-up window in the top right corner of your screen.
In the old version, the pop-up would be to the left, underneath your menus. And you could move it if you needed to.

Oh, and first thing I did was to delete the ‘recent bookmarks’ and ‘tags’ folders.

[...] Some other comments from human beings who have been subjected to this torture: 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.) [...]

Goodness, I doubt I can even use Firefox anymore with this mindboggling “feature.” It should have been an option, and I can’t figure out how to get rid of it yet. Back to IE for me until it’s fixed…

I still maintain that it is a great idea.. It’s just really bad to look at, and the algorithm they use to populate the list is obviously not what everyone wants.

Yeah, know, I DID just mention the only two differences between the new and old version, but that’s not the point.

” OC says, July 17th, 2008

I _don’t like_ the so called ‘awesome bar’ mainly because it is visually too crowded and thus less efficient for me. I would like to be able to go through the list quickly, as was the case in the former version.”

This guy (or girl?) has it, you know. All of you saying that you hate it, but you don’t know why you hate it - not clever, not cool. But OC is onto something. Personally I love the new algorithm, but the results that come up when I type something really ARE a bit big…

It had to be time for a change, though. I memorize urls and the convention a site uses to set said urls. However, none of my friends do it. I know because I get frustrated with them when they have to ask me for the urls to obvious things, and it makes me want to strangle them.

What should the bar look like then? Personally, my imagination isn’t good enough to pick something other than what we have now and what we had before - what about you guys?

I HATE the awesome (ly lame) bar..not because I care about searching from the address bar, but because whenever I start typing ‘www…’ in the address bar the FIRST thing that appears is my bookmarked PORN site. I buried the porn site in a bookmark subfolder, but it still comes up FIRST in the awesome bar (gag) and it comes up EVERY time. Yeah, that’s great firefox. Show everyone who might use FF my favorite pornsite everytime they type an url…THank YOU! Frickin idiots.

Oh and BTW, the “oldbar” add on, just changes the way that the ‘awesome’ bar magnificently displays my bookmarked porn site. It still displays the pornsite FIRST, and EVERY time that you stary typing in ANYTHING in the address bar.

If this doesn’t change, I will definitely stop using firefox

@Jim who is ashamed of his own actions
(OK OK I’m sure you’ve thought about that, but just in case, there it is)

When it brings up your history, you can press the down arrow key to highlight an entry, and then press “delete” to remove it from the list. Can you do this to said porn site without it also deleting the bookmark?

Anyway, I don’t know why you would do something as drastic as downgrading your browser just for the sake of one preference.
http://kev.deadsquid.com/?p=684
http://lifehacker.com/396603/tweak-the-awesomebars-suggestion-algorithm

If I didn’t want images to show up, I wouldn’t switch to Lynx, I’d just disable images like a normal person. That’s not hard, in fact it’s probably easier than getting a different browser.

What idiot tells these people that downgrading is easier than just changing a simple preference? Why do they believe it?!

Furthermore, if that porn site shows up first every time then it means that you visit it more than any other site (well, at least, any site which you access with a normally unnecessary “www.”)
..

If that is the case (the implication here is that you spend most of your online time looking at porn) then maybe it would be more convenient for you to just not hide what you’re doing online - regardless of how the address bar behaves.

@Jim,
Just do a search on about:Config or type this 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
P.S. I just downloaded 3.1 beta and it still a no-go for options

My advise is if you do not like you HAVE to tell Mozilla, and tell them WHY just don’t tell 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, ask for the OPIOID to turn it off in the Menu part of the program.
PEACE
JIm

@ SneakyWho_am_i
Why not just give the guy some slack, who cares what he’s doing, Mozilla should give options to turn the damn thing off, It won’t hurt them to do so, reason being is: options are there, just well hid in the about:config file. There should be no reason for people to complain about this. Mozilla is just following the industry standard, of, “We know better than you do, because we are software engineers.”
To Mozilla, why not make the options easily assessable? I know you put a lot of work into the address bar, but you should know not everyone is going to like it. Just give the Options in the Menu bar would that really hurt that much???????