One of the nice features of the Google Chrome browser is the auto-suggestion feature of the address bar. The web browser suggests a website once you start typing in the first letter. Return will instantly load that website, without having to fill out the remaining characters of the Internet address.
The Firefox add-on Prospector Speak Words adds that feature to Firefox. But more about that later. More interesting than that probably is the fact that it can be installed, disabled and removed without browser restart. That’s a first, at least for me.
Back to the add-on’s functionality. Prospector Speak Words adds Google Chrome’s auto-suggestion feature to Firefox. Just enter a few letters of a website’s name and the add-on will suggest the first matching Internet address by filling out the rest to complete the word.
The add-on is word-based, not url-based which means that it will only suggest words and names and not urls. Still, those words and names have to be part of a website’s title or Internet address to be suggested in first place.
The add-on abides by the rules set for the Firefox address bar. I have for instance set it to only suggest bookmarks when typing in the first words. This add-on in this case uses only bookmarks to auto-suggest a word or name.
The default setting IIRC is to search in the browser’s history and bookmarks.
Prospector Speak Words speeds up opening known websites in the web browser. The best case scenario is that you only need to enter the first letter and the enter key to load a website.
The add-on is an official Mozilla Labs add-on, which means that it may find its way into the core browser eventually. The add-on is only compatible with Firefox 4.0b4 – 4.0b8pre, and available for download at the official add-on site.
Related Articles:
Mozilla Labs Lab KitRemove words from the Firefox dictionary
Firefox Share, New Mozilla Labs Firefox Add-on
How To Copy Words Without Trailing Space In Firefox and Thunderbird
Mozilla Labs Ubiquity Is A Firefox Killer Application!
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ using the icons below.
I pointed this out in a comment awhile back(http://www.ghacks.net/2010/09/12/google-chrome-dev-now-with-instant-search/#comment-1196888) when it was still in development. :)
You can see posts about it on Edward Lee’s blog here(http://ed.agadak.net/). Also note past blog posts by him have more restartless addons he has made.
I don’t think if it is the first restartless add-on. There are several such add-ons already available at AMO. You can see them here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/tag/jetpack
Have been using this for moths:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7423/