Firefox 3.1 Improvements

Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 has been released and it introduces several new features and improvements to already existing ones. The buzz feature of Firefox 3.1 will definitely be tab previews which opens up a small overlay whenever the user presses CTRL TAB. It looks similar to Windows Vista’s Alt Tab behavior by displaying the tabs as visual thumbnails that the user can flip through.

Three tab thumbnails are shown by default but the value can be changed in the about:config settings by changing the parameter browser.ctrlTab.previewsCount. Users who prefer the old way and do not need or like this new tab thumbnails preview feature can turn it off completely by setting the parameter browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed to false.

Firefox 3.1 also introduces several changes to the Firefox location bar. Users will finally be able to define the Firefox 3 auto complete feature. The first noticeable change is the addition of five characters that, when entered in the location bar, will restrict the search. The characters can be entered anywhere in the location bar.

(via Mozillalinks)

• History = ^
• Bookmarks = *
• Tags = +
• Titles only = #
• Addresses only = @

That’s however confusing and a feature that only a few Firefox users will really take advantage of. The default characters can be changed in about:config as well.

Far more interesting is the possibility to change the default search, that is the search when no special char is entered. The special chars can be changed which includes their removal. Now if you want that the normal search is only searching your History then you would simply remove the ^ char in the about:config settings of the History parameter. Here are the five parameters:

• browser.urlbar.restrict.history
• browser.urlbar.restrict.bookmark
• browser.urlbar.restrict.tag
• browser.urlbar.match.title
• browser.urlbar.match.url

Removing the special char will apply the restriction by default which will help all the users who complain about the Firefox 3 location bar.