As I have talked about in the past, the URL/location bar in firefox 3 is just plain annoying. The latest beta build have had the option to disable the functionality by tweaking the about:config its not pretty, but it got the job done.
In my geekyness I decided to give the latest nightly build a run, massive mistake. They’ve totally removed all normal functionality from typing in URLs. It is now a search bar and not a URL bar. For example, today I was trying to access the webmail for my works domain to test out a reported problem. I type in the letter W and what comes up? Nothing useful. I typed in the URL no less then 2 hours before and would expect it to show up, instead I got a bunch of www domains.
In my search to find a solution I found my original post on the subject to be 6 pages long and no one has a real answer to the issue. Everyone is saying that you will have to use an extension to fix this. Fine, I installed an extension called oldbar which is supposed to fix it. One small problem, it only fixes the GUI (the part I really could care less about) and the results are still the same.
At this point in time there is no fix that I am aware of for ths URL bar. The awesome bar is a piece of crap and its pretty much a show stopper for me. If this does not get fixed I will not be able to use Firefox 3.
If anyone has a fix for this massive flaw I would love to hear about it.
I don’t get a single http://www. domain when I type a “w” into the addressbar on today’s build. I get pretty much exactly what I want. Perhaps you should update to a newer build.
- A
I am running the latest build - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008013104 Minefield/3.0b3pre ID:2008013104
Upgraded to the latest nightly version via the firefox auto updates. I got a new theme for Windows yesterday before posting and upgraded again today. I am still getting results with www when I hit just “w”.
For me the real solution would be to create a checkbox in the options to use just URLs. I don’t understand why any power user would want to search for the title of a website. Often this is the last thing that comes to mind when I try to find a site I frequent. If I wanted to search for something I would punch it into google.
Sounds like a bug or something special about your configuration. I’ll try to get someone to look into it. Could you say more about your install, prefs, extensions, etc? (email would work if you prefer that.)
- A
Same problem on mac version, without extensions. I type “h” and the first result is “h ttp://www.bloglines.com” ???
Yeah, I dont know whats going on with yours. My ff3 works fine. I dont get that list of random sites. Maybe try uninstalling and reinstalling and see if that fixes it?
One small problem with that, I’ve got ff3 latest nightly build on 3 computers. Each one of them has the same issue. There is definitely something wrong with the algorithm.
I agree with Zac that just typing in a single “w” or “h” brings up all the sites both in history and bookmarks that have a “w” or an “h” somewhere within the title and/or the URL. What takes first priority here is not at all clear though.
An interesting thing Zac, with the default nightly build configuration, the lists of possible sites in my case are similar to your second image which you say happened after you installed the “oldbar” extension. That’s the way the nightly builds of Firefox should look by default. I’ve never seen anything like what you show in the first image. My experience with the nightly builds anyway. Another small difference I see is that whatever letters I type in the address bar are subsequently underlined in the drop down list of possibilities. Just for info purposes I run the nightly builds in Minefield’s own default profile and Firefox 2 in it’s own separate profile created by Firefox 2’s Profile manager in order to keep the two strictly separate.
For Asa’s benefit, it’s not clear, from what I’ve seen in the nightly builds what the actual priority is for listing these possible sites. If this feature is actually placing any worth at all on “www” or “http” then that needs to be eliminated. If it’s just underlining the beginning “w” and “h” simply because it’s there, then I suggest that be eliminated also.
i have the same problem. if they dont fix this shit asap then i will go back to IE.
@M: Direct your going-back-to-IE threats to moco. They might (0.0001% chance) make this a pref.
Trying yo use this new bar makes me mad. It’s supposed to contain URLs, and so in the dropdown there should be only URLs that match what I start to type in the bar. That’s how all such text fields have been working in every application I’ve used.
This functionality is nice, but it should *not* be part of the location bar, it should be part of a separate search bar.
Evildead,
Two things you can do here using “about:config”…
1. For setting the URL bar to auto suggest according to only what you type. In “about:config” (type it in your address bar without the quotes for those that don’t know) look for:
browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped
…and change the value to “True” then restart the browser. I believe you’ll know have what your looking for.
2. For turning the auto suggest off completely, in “about:config” look for:
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
…and change the value to “0″. Now you’ll have a regular old address bar without an auto suggest feature.
Now if this drop down auto suggest really bothers some of you then instead of complaining about it or threatening to go to IE why not try going to the Mozilla forums (Firefox builds) or installing the "Chatzilla" extension and hooking into the Firefox channel on the Mozilla IRC Network and offer the developers some constructive feedback while there’s still time for them to do so. For instance; like what I suggested above should be included in the options dialog instead of having to go into "about:config".
Hope this helps.
That option has actually been removed from the latest versions of ff3. As of the time of writing this the nightly version of Firefox3 does not support these options in about:config. They have been removed.
I did try to open up the lines of communications about this issue by posting in the mozillazine forums. All I ended up getting was 7 pages of people mostly complaining.
Mozilla no longer listens to end users. They act like they do, but end up doing what they believe is best in the first place. They are quite a bit like Apple in that way.
After that first day when Asa replied to this post a few times I have not heard back. I emailed him a few times on that day and he stated that he would get back to me. I emailed him a few days ago just to see if he figured anything out, silence. I understand being busy, but they are saying FF3 is going to be out rather quickly and this huge mess is still in the latest version.
Hey Zac,
Now that’s funny, those examples I gave were from the latest nightly build and they were definitely in there (I wasn’t addressing you in that last reply Zac, but certain others). Besides, if they actually do remove these two options iI mentioned in my last comment all you have to do is add them back in. They should still work okay. It’s like this one:
“config.trim_on_minimize” (new boolean: set to “true”)
…which gives back most of the memory used when you minimize Firefox just like any program should do but they never bothered to incorporate it into “about:config”. I’ve had to add it in for every version I’ve ever used.
For me, the important thing is all the work that’s been done on the code, the bug fixes, the plugged memory leaks and how well it functions overall. In my testing with multiple windows open, running the latest nightly builds around 16 hours straight memory use averages around 60 MB or less with peaks up to 75 but the XPCOM recycler seems to do a good job at reclaiming unused memory. The point is that the theme and the address bar auto suggest is minor as compared to how well Firefox 3 works as compared to the past versions. In that, I have no complaint.
I’ve installed the latest nightly build (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008021804 Minefield/3.0b4pre ID:2008021804) and tested these settings. Nothing.
I am still getting horrible results when I start to type a domain in. When I change browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 0 it removes the entire history in the URL bar. By this I mean nothing drops down. Below you will find a screenshot of my results when I type in “g”.
http://zacgarrett.com/uploads/2008/02/ff3_bar_results.png
It is kind of hard to explain why something this screwed up is still in the build. To get decent results I have to type in at least 3 characters. I believe this is due to using SQLite. In SQL it is harder to match items with a little bit of text.
Note to self: add more space between comments; they are hard to read at the moment.
Thanks for your suggestions about the possible configuration. However, it still does not behave as a normal “url bar” even with these two options defined. For instance, if I want to go to the wordreference.com website and start typing “word” in the url bar, the first result I get is a url to a page that contains “word” in its title but not in its url.
As for using Mozillazine, I’ve been a member since the end of 2003. Users just talk together, there’s no sign of life from the developers. Voting in Bugzilla does not help either.
I agree with Zac, in the end, they will do what they think is good. If they believe this “awesome” bar will help new users, they will keep it as it is even if older users complain.
Why didn’t they keep the old one together with this one? They said they removed the old one to avoid code bloat. From my point of view, they are two separate components: a url bar and an awesome bar. Why removing an autonomous component would help? My guess is that they decided that FF must be used with this new bar to force users to get use to it, so they simply removed the old one.
And no, I won’t use IE because of this. Fist because I’m using Linux, and second because I’ve been using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox for a too long time to stop using it for such reason. Even if I can’t get used to this bar.
Evildead,
Ah, I see your point now. Since the the new address bar looks on visited and bookmarked page titles and tags along with web addresses for it’s auto complete function that tells me it’s making queries to the SQLite database for it’s resources. This also tells me that if you hadn’t visited or bookmarked “wordreference.com” before you typed in “word” in the address bar then “wordreference.com” wouldn’t come up. So I tried something.
Since I’ve never been to “wordreference.com” before using the nightly builds I went ahead and brought their home page up in the browser. I then closed the tab opened up a blank one and typed “word” into the address bar and “wordreference.com” came up in both url and title (same entry). Clearing private data removed this entry from “Recently visited” in the Smart Folder and “History” and subsequently the auto complete drop-down of course but if I bookmarked “wordreference.com” then it came up every time I typed “word” in the address bar whether I cleared private data or not (goes without saying, I know). This was something the old address bar didn’t do as it only drew from “History”.
Thinking about it this way the new address bar makes sense. The old one in Firefox 2 did not draw from the static Bookmarks file, only History (no tags in FX2 of course). With the new system of having Boomarks, History (IE: “Recently Visited”, “Most Visited”)and Tags stored in an SQLite Database then the so called “Awesome bar” is basically a glorified live search bar that queries your local SQLite database tables for it’s results. Being an old WordPress type person I can appreciate it more I suppose.
Still, I think the those two options we were talking about should have been included in Firefox 3’s Options menu.
I tried posting about this on the mozillazine.org forums as well. This new setup is awful, and the response I got was basically “if you don’t like the new awesome bar then you’re an idiot, and it’s too late to change anything so deal with it.”
Hopefully someone will release an extension to let us go back to the old style address bar. I can’t understand why there isn’t an option to disable this.
I so totally agree i cannot stand this location bar mess. Its not intuitive its information over load.
Its not simple and grandma will be calling me now with even more stupid questions because she cant just type in url and have it quickly pop up.
GAH! Why do programs geek shit up. Seriously. ASK the user first. Is it any wonder why executives want to keep you in the basement? This is exactly why!
i completely agree, this new url bar is total crap. not to mention that is slow as hell.
Just wanted to say thanks for the fix. The FF3 has been a great improvement in many ares, but not being able to clear settings, ALL settings is a major oversight. Hoping it will be more user friendly in the final release.
I ran across this site googling for a way to disable the damn thing, too bad it looks like you can’t.
I just finished reading a little about what they have planned for FF4, and it takes things even farther away from the simple browser. I wish they’d give a little thought and make all this fluff the domain of ‘official’ extensions and NOT afflict the the unwilling.
[...] when I often visit sites or pages with cryptic URLs that I don’t remember. I know there are those out there who dislike it, but I find it ever so helpful in my daily web browsing experience. If you find you really [...]
And to make thing worse, pressing down-arrow *sometimes* moves to the first result, and *sometimes* moves to the first result below the mouse cursor. I’m rather scared — if the FF developers happily push these kind of misfeatures on us, who knows what they are capable of. (If it weren’t for FireBug, I think I’d have gone Opera already.)
I am a _power_ browser user and I open and close LOTS of tabs. I find the new URL bar “feature” just slows me down. The problem?
Duplicated data and less useful information in the same amount of space.
I want unique results to be on the SAME line. How hard can that be? I don’t want to waste time parsing horizontal line breaks to find the next unique result. The brain is slower at that than just assuming the next line is a unique result.
With the new URL bar, it is also harder to compare and contrast URLs. Your brain would have to parse a unique URL result, discard everything but the URL (i.e. remember the URL), then do the same with all URL results in the URL bar.
It is too much effort for our lazy brains.
I got my first look at Firefox 3 while installing Ubuntu 8.04 a week ago. Yuck! My solution was to install SeaMonkey 1.1.9 for Linux and set it as the default browser. End of problem.
Firefox was an interesting experiment while it lasted. It’s dead now for all I care.
Utterly hate the new ‘awesome bar’. Utterly loving Firefox 3 apart from that. Been using ‘firefox’ since it was Phoenix 0.5(?) and then Firebird, so I’m a loooong term user.
However, this is driving me utterly nuts. I want to type ‘d’, ‘down arrow’, ‘enter’ to get to ‘digg’ (because its my most commonly visited site beginning with ‘d’) as I always have. Not wade through all these other common sites I visit that begin with all these other letters I didn’t type.
Extension to get the old behaviour back? What a joke. about:config change I can just about live with, a simple option like the ‘view->zoom->zoom text only’ one would be the best option here by far.
Agreed. New urlbar is stupid. Dear Firefox team, please put an option in to bring back the old one. If it’s “too hard” learn to program please.
I love the awesome bar. I use it constantly. I can’t use ff2 anymore because of it.
If one letter is a problem, do something extreme like typing in a second one to clarify.
The only time I see a problem is when there are many similar urls with dynamic variables on the end, but then I did ask it for the url, not the name.
Best addition to Firefox in a long time.
The Awesome Bar is the best advertisement for Internet Explorer that has ever been developed.
The old URL bar is much much better, and quicker. If FF3 keeps the craptastic “Awesome Bar”, then I will never upgrade beyond version 2.0.0.14.
It’s a deal-breaker for me, too.
CANNOT STAND this new “Awesome bar”
This is HORRIBLE AWFUL TERRIBLE THE WORST MISTAKE EVER.
I will NOT use FF3 until/if option to go back to FF2 behavior is available.
– Removed by Zac due to being a personal attack.
A Cnet article: Firefox 3 ‘awesome bar’ not awesome for all follow the link and vote
http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-9965812-12.html
set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults; to zero
disables the feature sow it will not show suggestions from the address bar when you type
Billy, you de-legitimize this site and the other people commenting here by turning to personal insults.
I’ve removed Billy’s comment due to it being a personal attack. There is no need for personal attacks when it comes to dealing with technology.
Good call, Zac :)
The only problem with setting the values to zero is that the url bar doesn’t save my last websites that I visit. I don’t mind having a bar that drops down with every site that I personally put into url bar, I have a problem with if i want to type in gmail.com, i have to contend with every single thing that i’ve ever typed that has a “G” in the url. This is a horrible idea ESPECIALLY for shared computers.
It’d be okay and tolorable ifI could just erase the cookies or clear the cache, but that won’t even work. This is definitely something that needs to be addressed and fixed RIGHT NOW.
on typing “w”, displaying sites that start with www is forehead slappingly stupid. I just tried it. I cant believe it. As I mentioned in another post the behaviour could be fixed very easily: 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
that you type w, you get your w sites first, then sites whos page titles start with w, then sites which have words that start with w in title, THEN you’d get your www sites (but you’d hope they would write it to ignore that part of the name.
Your problem is easy to fix.
Go to about:config.
Search for “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults” and change the value from 12 to 0.
Close FF3, restart. Problem solved.
I want the simple “starts-with” and “only match URL” behavior back. Ordered by frequency, as per Fx2.
The “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults” to 0 “fix” simply hides the suggestions outright.
stung81, this gets rid of any results, at least it did with me
Personally, I like the new search feature. I also appreciate that is searches subdomains, as I’m doing development on a testing site, and to get to it all I have to do is type “dev.” and the search result comes up. So you have to type three letters before your desired search comes up? Better than typing the whole thing, still.
You know, after using the new Location Bar (aka “Awesome Bar”) for a while, it’s really not that bad.
Being able to type as a search as well for an address is quite okay.
I changed the maxRichResults value from 12 to 6 so it didn’t take up too much screen space.
A simple URL-only search that searches from the start of the address. Brilliant for users of multiple pages on a site with URLs with dynamic variables, and incredibly quick in use: we+Down+Enter = webmail, n+Down+Enter = news etc. Now it’s a case of typing in the extra letters, and then looking up to hunt through a list arranged by an unintuitive algorithm. None of the hacks or plugins detailed here get back the old-style behaviour.
The people commenting here don’t want AwesomeBar being taken away from those who like it - but it shouldn’t be difficult to give old version back to those who want it in the form of an option/about:config hack. What is the reason the developers are being so stubborn on this issue?
If you hate the “Awesome Bar”, don’t want to install an experimental extension, don’t want to use IE, then try Opera. Also try Opera mini on your phone. http://www.opera.com/
What a piece of crap. What is so awesome about it. It is annoying and I want to turn it off.
go to Google and search for “old bar for Firefox 3″and then download that and enable it then you wont have problems with the awesome bar … it will be the old bar.
The Firefox 3 “Awsome bar” is God Awful annoying and horrifically badly designed. Especially for me since I delete all history, cookies, and all private data upon every exit. All it comes up with when I type “www” to go anywhere is spam from the Mozilla group. Horrid. Simply horrid.
Hi Donna,
I caught your comment here and tried the same thing in Firefox 3.0 myself and got significantly different results than you did and I still have the default Mozilla folder that comes in the bookmarks on install.
Typing “www” into my location bar brings up only the sites I visit most often whose URL’s actually begin with http://“www” vs just http://. These include one of my sites, both main page and login, two weather sites, my local news site and one of the statistics sites I use.
Seems like the majority of Firefox 3.0 users aren’t having any trouble at all obtaining the kind of results I’m getting only after a two-three days of use (so the Firefox 3.0 “Places” database can “learn” your browsing habits). I’m really puzzled about why only a relatively small group of folks are definitely experiencing the problems that you’re seeing. I’ve run several test installs using several different profile setups and I can’t duplicate these useless results you folks are getting.
The only thing I can’t factor into the equation is what extensions might be causing the problem since most of commenters here have given any info about their system, OS or the extensions they’re running. I’m beginning to think that there might be a common extension(s?) that might be keeping the location bar from “learning” properly.
Anyway, with the end of the year 3.1 release, “History” should finally be incorporated into the “Places” SQLite DB along with the Bookmark related data already in place. At that point the dev’s plan to put the required filters in place so that users can select exactly what kind of results they want displayed in the Location bar which should make things a lot better.
I’ve been using Firefox 3.0 for a few weeks, and I don’t mind the new address bar now. In fact, it’s been quite useful for finding pages I’d otherwise not been able to find.
Unless the dev team make an option to return the function of the previous address bar, I’m learning to live and work with the new one :)
I don’t get all these people who say that they’ll switch back to Explorer just because of one silly feature. Explorer is the one browser that really IS utter shit, no matter how you look at it, and there’s absolutely not a single legitimate reason to be using it. If you care for the future of the web, please stop using that outdated browser (yes, even IE7 is outdated and buggy).
If you don’t like the new “awesome bar” in Firefox, then you can either install one of the available extensions to remove it, or maybe switch to Opera, Safari or any other browser (the World is not only IE & FF).
I downloaded the latest beta (3.01) and doing the “browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped;true” thing seems to completely turn off the awesome bar. Anyone else notice this?
I’m now using the final version of FF 3.01 and using about:config disables the awesome bar. Not even a dropdown list.
It really isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Use it for a few weeks and then make your mind up. I read all about it, hated the concept, but having used it I don’t have a problem. All the addresses come up that I need, when I want.
I can understand the wish for an option to revert to the previous behavior, and that should be included, but give the redesign a chance first.
The “Awesome Bar” is every bit as bad as the critics say it is. It turns a formerly quick hunt for a webpage into a frustrating and time consuming procedure.
I removed FF3 after struggling with it for 2 days, and I’ll never use it again as long as that horrible location bar is part of the browser.
I now use FF2 and Safari. FF2 may be slow, but it is much more pleasant to use. Safari for Windows turns out to be a very good, quick browser.
THANKS A LOT
the add on did the trick….It should be the other way around