Access the Firefox address bar faster from anywhere

How are you accessing the Firefox address bar? Are you using the mouse to move its cursor to the bar to click on it to activate it so that you can start entering an url or term that you want to open or search for? Or are you using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-L to activate it without moving the mouse at all?

What if there was a third option that is even faster than both options described in the paragraph above? What if you could activate it by simply starting to type almost anywhere on the page you are currently viewing? That's what the Simplify Awesome Bar add-on for the Firefox web browser adds to the browser.

All you need to do is install the add-on to add its functionality to Firefox. You do not need to restart the browser, the functionality is available right away. Once you start typing on a page in the browser you will notice that what you type appears in the browser's address bar so that you can use it to open websites or perform searches effortlessly.

This works almost anywhere on a page. There are a couple of restrictions where this does not work. You can't for instance use it when a form field is the active element on a web page as you start adding text to it instead when you start typing.

The extension makes available another feature that may be useful to some Firefox users. You can send selected text to the browser's address bar with a tap on the space key.  Even better is the fact that you can combine that with characters you type as long as you do in one go.

Accessing the address bar becomes a tad more convenient after installation of the addon. Remember that you can load a search query or url in a new tab by pressing Alt-Enter instead of just Enter.

Check out our Tweak the Firefox address bar guide for a detailed guide on how to get the most out of it.

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