Firefox 3 beta 2 was just released and to my dismay there is a new redesign of how the location bar (also known as URL bar and address Bar) works. Now when you start to type in a URL it will search for everything you’ve ever done that resembles the text you type in. For those of us who are constantly typing in URLs this is just annoying.
Luckily there is a simple fix for it. In about:config change browser.urlbar.richResults from True to False. You can do this simply by double clicking the item. Once changed restart the browser and your location bar should be back to normal.
UPDATE: In the first comment AndrewM gave some very insightful information about the status of this tweak. They are getting rid of the old URL bar in Firefox itself and you will have to use an extension to get it back.
ahh thanks for the info
there should be a toggle for this in options anyway
anyway, it’s renamed now:
browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped has to be setted to true
It has actually be totally removed in the latest nightly builds. Changing that value does not do anything to the results. They have made it fairly clear that they do not want to allow the old URL bar format without quite a bit of work.
At this point I am totally unexcited about FF3 as the theme sucks by default on Windows (looks okay on OS X) and if you have a non-brand new profile your results are pretty much horrible.
http://zacgarrett.com/software/firefox-3-awesome-bar-still-a-piece-of-junk/index.html
At first I thought that the redesign really sucked too and wanted the old one back, but after 10 minutes I realized it was really convenient. Being able to type in words from the page title is more intuitive than URLs, and I got used to it in less than a day. Better yet, in Beta 4 they are making so that you can search for multiple non-contiguous words in the title and URL.
The problem is it doesn’t work. They’ve basically added a feature that no one requested and is just a problem to the people who actually use the address bar. I’ve stopped running the nightly builds as it is unusable to me.
I have to agree - I just started using the 3.0 beta 5, and I found it highly irritating to see all of the links from my favourites popping up once I started typing in the address bar. I’d rather my favourites stay in my favourites, and don’t get displayed for everyone to see whenever I type something similar in the address bar. Maybe this could be improved with a shortcut key…like when I type some key words, then hit a shortcut key (e.g., the down arrow), the list could popup then.
In beta 5 (installed on Fedora 7) the only option I could use in about:config to fix this is “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults”, which I set to zero.
“In beta 5 (installed on Fedora 7) the only option I could use in about:config to fix this is “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults”, which I set to zero.”
This fixed it for me. I for one use firefox to browse porn, and I sure don’t want everyone that uses my computer to have http://www.xvideos.com pop up in their face! This was a deal breaker until I found this setting. Seriously, isn’t a large portion of the firefox market porn viewers? lol.
Setting browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 0 sadly enough doesn’t give back the old functionality, it just disabled any form of auto-completion
i completely agree. i use this address bar for various other tools. it’s clear what the benefit is for mozilla foundation as this increases their search revenue, and they’ve taken a sneaky step towards obfuscating that fact and limiting user experience.
Hey there Zac, thanks for putting up this little hack for us beta freaks! I just decided to try the beta and as you say, to one’s dismay they’ve gone ahead and added *this* piece of crap into the beta with no way of turning it off.
However, an update is in order, the value you mentioned called browser.urlbar.richResults doesn’t exist in the latest version which I have. Instead I had to disable the bar by changing the browser.urlbar.maxRichResults value to 0.
Geeze, you’d think they would allow the end user to control such an aspect of the program right? tsk tsk.. if the mozilla people start making decisions for their end users, they’re going against the one thing that makes FF work, it’s versatility!
The excellent plugin oldbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227) has been updated to work with Beta 4 and 5pre; it completely restores the FF2 location bar behavior.
Try browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped for ff3b4 and later.
/ac
Yes, agreed, the url auto search really sucks. Glad this tweak removed it for me. I am sure they will fix this in the next update.
I do not like UI designs like this which are optimized for glacially slow typists. It even seems to be geared towards those who look at one key as they hit it, look up at the screen to see what happened, then look down at the keyboard again as they hit the next key. This really is *that* bad.
this is complete BS.
One of the best things about Firefox was being able to type in “cnn” and have it go to http://www.cnn.com . Now it SUCKS and takes you to some stupid yahoo page.
Dumb decisions like this is what destroyed Detroit.
Yeah, that feature is nice. As a sort of go-around, you can type “cnn” and then hit ctrl+enter to add “http://www.” before and “.com” after and submit.
Ctrl+Enter = .com
Shift+Enter = .net
Shift+Ctrl+Enter = .org
I agree it’s a nice feature to have website titles show up like this, but I want to disable this anyway. I have always found my sites using the url only and I do not need any assistance in doing so.
I think there should be a decent way to change this option (the about:config page is not). I would even suggest to turn this off by default, add some kind of dialog that asks to enable it on first use (with a “ask me again tomorrow, I want to try it” option). I’m sure lots of people will call in their local computer-guru to change this for them, because it’s different than what they have been using. Not saying that different is bad by definition, but older and less computer-savvy people for example may disagree. Besides, a two-line address bar may be harder to search through visually (I think it is).
Secondly, I will not be looking forward to all the ad-websites that fill their titles with common words like google, yahoo, hotmail, etc. This option gives control over your address bar to whatever ugly popup ads come by. The option browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped should be enabled by default because of this.
Apologies if I missed anything obvious!
As for the rest, keep going! The browser aint all that bad :P
This new misfeature prevents many of our company internal systems from working. We rely heavily on urls such as http://wiki/index.php/some_page taking us to the appropriate page in the company internal wiki. In the context of the company intranet that is a valid URL but the new Firefox won’t allow that. I have either got to find a way to get rid of this new behaviour or start using Explorer.
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.
That means the front page will never be the last on you visited, although it is almost always the first one you want to visit next time.
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.
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 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 use to open most web pages by typing in the first 2 or 3 letters of the url, and the right url would be right there on top of the list. For this, the new behavior is completely useless.
So unless they offer a choice, I am going back to internet explorer.
I tried to change it from true to false and it wouldn’t allow me to. however, I changed it from 12 to 0 and now it works alot better! Thanks a million for this site.
how do you go into about:config and change the value from 12 to 0. Thanks for the help.
YOu type the about:config in your browser bar to access it.
[...] Disable URL Search in Location Bar of Firefox 3 | Zac Garrett :: Technology Geek (tags: firefox ff3 about:config) [...]
With this addon you can go back to FF2 Address bar / Location bar.
Not only in aspect but also in functionality!!!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7637
:-D :-D
THIS addon is the final solution: a REAL ff2 location bar on FF3!!!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7637
(not to be mistaken with the “oldbar” addon, that changes the appearance only!)