I’d consider myself to be an advanced “normal” user (i.e. I’m not a “proper” techie but I’m not scared to dip my toe into the technical stuff when I need to; I rely heavily on technology to make my life easier, and will do what is necessary to bend it to my will!), and I LOVE the awesome bar. Advanced users should be perfectly capable of changing the about:config setting (to browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = 0) if they don’t like the new feature (and there are various other tips to force it to behave more like the old bar here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=685365). Your complaint about resources makes no sense if you’ve gone back to FF2, since that’s supposed to be a bigger memory hog than FF3 (I know that some people debate this but on the whole it seems to be generally acknowledged as true).

Liking it doesn’t mean you are some kind of technological retard who shouldn’t be using firefox in the first place. TBH, your post smacks of tech-snobbery; “Lets keep things complicated to deter the plebs”!

Yes, I agree that it is not good for developers to add unnecessary bloat to an app, but one person’s “bloat” can be another person’s “must have feature”. Of course you are correct that FF could have implemented this as an extension, but integrating it with the browser is probably a more efficient way of doing it, and for the vast majority of users I think this feature is an improvement. I’ve heard people argue that tabbed browsing should be an add-on rather than a default feature!

I strongly suspect that the poll above is skewed by the vocal minority who probably ended up on this page after searching for info on how to disable the bar. People who are content or have no strong opinions don’t get accurately reflected in polls like this.

Luckily, 3.1 seems to be heading in a speedier direction.

By the way, Mozilla is working on providing the functions that old users want by choosing from about:config where the awesomebar searches(bookmarks, history). And Firefox 3.1 already uses +, ^, *, @ and # to choose between tagged, history, bookmarks, URLs and title/tags.

The whole AB feature comes across as a feature designed for mass market appeal, which is obviously what FF needs to be able to dislodge IE.

AB comes across as a feature that panders to the lowest common denominator, those who are simply unwilling to spend any time learning how to use a browser (aka RTFM), or those who are just terrified of clicking about in an application. These are people that use IE now (because the internet is a blue e to them) or just have never used a computer!

In FF, the history was already searchable before FF3, as were the bookmarks (granted, crudely, but extensions could enhance that). The URL bar is funnily enough for the URL, so when it has a lot of other features suddenly crammed in there it becomes a mess. When I type into the address bar I expect it to show me addresses, and not to have the computer second guessing at what I want to look at. I’ll agree that to the untrained eye a URL does look like rubbish anyway, but what is so wrong with learning how to use a tool?

The original philosophy of FF was to create a lean and fast browser, with addon support for additional features. The AB is very obvious facet of leaving that behind, and by leaving that philosophy behind FF runs the risk of losing what brought so many people to it in the first place. The browser should be a box that renders HTML, images, and parses javascript. FF should be pretty much just that, but it seems to just get fatter with each version.

The awful bar should have been an addon, and if Mozilla wanted it to be in FF3 by default then it should have been done as a package of FF3 with an AB addon by default. That way, it could have simply been disabled or removed by those who don’t want it, instead of trying to apply many workarounds which don’t really bring back the normal behaviour of the address bar. And besides, even with the AB turned off the code is still there, taking up resources, not to mention that there could be security vulnerabilities related to the AB. Why should so many people (a third, by your stats) have to suffer the downsides of the AB?

And just think how much time (and in turn money) has been wasted on the AB! The whole AB debate would have been a fraction of what it is if it wasn’t for some marketing idea that was forced on everyone.

i like it, don’t have to remember an exact url, just a word or two

Privacy is not necessarily the same as secrecy.

I move from client to client with a laptop and when I type www in the address bar, I’d really rather not display a list of every customer, supplier, security or government site I’ve been to; in fact I’m contractually obliged not to. Forget displaying your history and bookmarks, forget searching the web. Stop listing redirects, adverts and domains that have offensive names.

This should be available with a simple check box, privacy options should NOT be hidden away in about:config simply for the sake of conformity or because some mozdev fancies himself as a UI genius.

Three weeks back I had detectives with me, looking over my shoulder while I was demonstrating some WAN CCTV, again on the laptop. It then happened that I needed to use my browser to log into a secure website and get details of a recent crime for them. As a security contractor I need to keep up to date with all manner of things, visit all sorts of sites, and I’d have little problem justifying such. But should I have really had to hold my breath, wondering whether Firefox was going to display something that would have me filling out forms to get my machines back?

With apparent hubris, Mozilla dismisses complainants as being part of the always [very] vocal minority. As many of us actually started out as the [very] vocal minority in IE space, just who do they think promoted Firefox over IE in the first place? Mozilla’s popularity is certainly not down to a glittering TV campaign and full page advertisements in the newspapers, nor do they have an OS to piggy-back.

The argument that ‘most people’ are happy with this direction holds no comfort for me. ‘Most’ of them were comfortable with IE originally. ‘Most people’ will at some point click yourbank.exe, leave wifi routers open and give complete strangers their date of birth. Doesn’t mean they’re right though, does it?

Firefox is still piss-ant in business compared to IE, probably because people don’t want the word C**T flashing up on the boardroom projector screen.

Cordially.

Alt+V, T, N to toggle on / off the location (awesome, navigation) bar;
Alt+V, T, B for the bookmarks toolbar.

So you can both have it or not have it, as you prefer…
–Ken

I have since downgraded to firefox 2 because development on websites became too frustrating with 3. Please provide an option to completely revert back to the functionality of FF2.

I’ve simply set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = 0 problem solved.

I love the damn thing I just hate the name. It’s a great feature but it ain’t awsome and it doesn’t awe me. The official name is the Location Bar by the way. Be that as it may…

I’ve always despised cascading menus especially when trying to haul through my severely bloated bookmarks trying to find that one medical site I visited last year when the VA threatened me with surgery. Now the VA is actually going to do the surgery and thanks to the so called Awesome Bar, all I did was start typing in the phrase “drawn and quartered” and up popped the correct bookmark just like that. I’ll never have to deal with those cascading bookmark menus from hell again.

And if you can’t remember where your favorite XXX video is located, for heavens sake don’t bookmark it. Instead, install the the “Scrapbook” extension and bookmark it there (and then rename it Bertha’s Garden Secrets or something to that effect).

Have a great day.