Fix Firefox 3’s location bar
While the new location bar is currently voted the favorite Firefox 3 feature with about 37% of 1,695 votes cast so far, it seems from comments to my recent Firefox 3 Beta 3 review, that a significant number of users are less than happy with it.
The most common complaint is the new two line autocomplete menu which some users find too obtrusive.
One possible solution is to reduce the number of suggestions displayed.
Yet another is to install Seth Spitzer’s oldbar, a simple Firefox extension that restores the location bar autocomplete to single line suggestions and doesn’t underline the matched terms but still looks for the entered terms in bookmarks, history and tags.
UPDATE: oldbar 1.2 is now compatible with Firefox 3 Beta 3 so I’m removing the bumped version.
UPDATE: For more tweaks including ways to exclude bookmarks and history from the location bar, check these 9 tweaks for Firefox 3’s location bar.
Comments
Peter
Slightly amusing that you are advertising Flock http://www.flock.com at the bottom of this post?
Percy Cabello
Peter, not really since this is “Mozilla” Links not Firefox Links.
Benno
People will complain about anything… Personally I think the two lines is just right as it gives you more information without too much clutter. I think the oldbar extension looks more confusing
Ferdinand
Could mozillalinks provide a digg button for every article? mozillalinks has one of the best Firefox articles on multiple topics but never gets on the frontpage of digg whereas dumb blogs with firefox beta announcements regularly reach the frontpage. Especially digg users who are very loud on the internet should get good information.
Thank you
Wildcatter1980
“Awesome” bar is a yawn. I’m guessing there are others who like me are more likely to “search” rather than “waste” time hoping that typing in the address bar will yield what we are looking for.
Mr driller
man…I HATE this new location bar algorithm..It thinks all users are some dumb nut with a goldfish memory! I used to just type 1 letter in the bar and get to the correct site becuase i go there often. eg: i type “a” and acmilan.com is always there first. Now i type “a” every random shit with an “a” in the address or title comes up. and i have to type more to get to acmilan.com. has mozilla done a proper study with real users and not a bunch of goldfish who cant even remember the first 3 letters of a url?
no and don’t tell me to bookmark because mouse move and clicks are more time wasting then keyboard commands. I’ve done computing degree and major in computer human interactions. this new location bar definitely has not being accommodated for advanced users with IQ over 100.
cathal
I don’t like the new Firefox beta 3. Here are the reasons why:
Not happy with the location bar, The home page Icon is to small. Rather have the home page Icon beside the stop button. If I go to Yahoo Q&A it keeps tracks of all the questions i have answered and it very annoying which means i have to keep pressing the dam clear history button the whole time. I have unstalled Firefox 3 beta of my computer
Mark
Why? Why do we not have the option to turn off the location bar displaying your bookmarked results?
This is very very poor design. I have a bunch of bookmarks “buried” for a specific reason. I don’t need anyone that uses my computer and pressing the drop down arrow seeing what bills I pay, where I go to view my job offers and so forth.
Very very bad decision. I like (not love) the new locbar…. but to not allow the choice of smart searching is, IMO, conducive to every reason why I do not use Internet Explorer.
I guess I will take a look at Opera… or I even read someone mention Camino.
Kirk M
Okay, I for one like the idea of the new address bar. Being experienced with SQL databases probably has something to do with it and I don’t really mind the way it works by default but that’s purely subjective on my part.
What I disagree with is the fact that the new address bar functions are on full blast by default with no way for the user to easily adjust these functions. Even in IE you can turn off it’s inline auto complete function from within it’s options dialog (not quite the same thing I know but still..). For example, the user should not have to go into “about.config” to make adjustments for this kind of obvious feature, they should be able to go into Firefox 3’s options to do this for example:
In the Firefox 3’s Options dialog there could be a small “Change the Awesome bar” section that hooks into these two functions in “about.config”:
->browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped ( just a simple check box)
and
->browser.urlbar.maxRichResults (selection between say “0 to 25″ for example)
This way the user could easily adjust the way the address bar functions when it “live searches” the SQLite database as to how it performs it’s search and the number of results it turns up. Adding the ability to remove the URL or the “title” portion of the search results would be frosting on the cake (“Show only title”/”Show only url in the search results”). Like I said, I like the new address bar and it’s functions but it reminds me a bit of driving a new car with the throttle wired wide open.
SamW
The Beta 3 bar is supposedly improved, but it doesn’t seem like it from how frequently is tries to show things like irrelevant amazon listings (which did not happen with Beta 2).
Thats really my only complaint about it, perhaps I’ll have to file a bug report.
rng
That 404 page is an especially intelligent suggestion. Show me all my typos again, rub it in!
randy johnson
hey
I have to ask, why can’t have a totally “detachable toolbar” so we can put a given tool or app wherever we want???.
In particle maybe get rid of that blue line/strip on the top OR could we move the min/max/close button down 1 line and get rid of it altogether,
maybe give us more control over where and what we see on this
browser …????
randy (a nubee)
Jon
Unfortunately that doesn’t solve the problem I have with the new address bar; I don’t mind the _look_ (including the two-line display), in fact, I rather like it. What I don’t like is the functionality; it does a string search on everything I’ve ever done rather than just autocomplete the URL. I am accustomed to typing in IE or FF2 “ars”, and seeing a list of arstechnica URLS I’ve been to recently, with the main page (arstechnica.com/index.ars) at the top, and most recently read articles immediately following, which is useful, that’s how autocomplete works in every other program, you start it, autocomplete completes it. Now I get a list of everything I’ve ever visited having to do with cARS. The autocomplete feature has been rendered completely useless. Why would anybody want that?
Firefox 3 — Matt’s Waste of Your Time
[...] Some people don’t like it, but I think it just needs some more work. I like that it learns over time which results should be on the top for a given input (or you can star items to promote them). The UI is way too busy, though. There’s no easy route for the eye to follow (I’d love to see an eye-tracking study on this). I don’t find the bold/underlined keywords to be helpful at all, it just makes things busier. [...]
Sprocket999
@ Mark February 17, 2008 11:19 pm
“Why? Why do we not have the option to turn off the location bar displaying your bookmarked results?”
Well, Mark, actually you can. I too have found this a very annoying behaviour, so I found a way to deal with it that works. Below are the steps to take. You might care to copy ‘n’ paste this response to a word processor then print out the page. It is easier that way.:
1. In the browser location bar type: “about:config” (without quotes)
2. A screen will appear that says: “This might void your warranty” click “Yes, I’ll be careful”.
3. Next you will see a screen with hundreds of lines of options. Type ‘urlbar’ in the space marked ‘Filter’.
4. Look for the line that reads: browser.’urlbar.MaxRichResults’
5. Double click on that line — a box will pop up — change the integer to “0″ (without quotes).
6. Close the box and click the browser BACK button to return to the main browser window.
7. In the Preferences, go to Privacy (PC = Options > Tools) and set “Keep my history for “0″ days”.
8. Quit Firefox and the next time you start, you SHOULD not have this annoying issue.
I hope that works for you. It sure fixed it for me! Good luck!!
DanielJune 17th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
You Rock!
I just downloaded FF3 and thought, “Oh no, can I go back? I hate the less than awesome bar.” 1 minute later I’m Googling for help killing it. 2 minutes later I read Mark’s great fix. Thank you. Thank you.
enovyJune 18th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
@Sprocket999
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I don’t need my address bar to have every favorite in it. That is why I have a bookmark section. And if I wanted to see my history, then I would go to view and select history. I just want an auto fill there.
steve
THANK YOU! I hate the new location bar thing, its so irritating. This is just what I needed.
Sprocket999
My pleasure, Steve. Happy to have been able to be of assistance.
Tweak Firefox 3 location bar autocomplete menu : Mozilla Links
[...] can also reduce the number of suggestions in the autocomplete menu with this tip. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where [...]
Callaway7
Tried installing oldbar extension on Beta3 Release 4, won’t install. Gotta tell ya, I don’t find it too helpful the location bar is searching through my bookmarks to find suggestions. I mean, I know where to find my porn, I don’t need help.
Mkxx
Is it possible to disable the autocomplete feature sometimes? I LOVE firefox 3 and ALL its new features including this – But sometimes, for privacy reasons when others want to check email or some website a list of my bookmarks and history gets displayed. That’s great and it make things a lot easier for me, but I’d like to be able to disable it sometimes. Thx
jason lee
Let me decide what I want a browser to track or not, and give me the options to turn off the URL history- I find it annoying, and for computers used by multiple persons, I don’t want their stuff cluttering up my URL lists!
Fixit mannOctober 6th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Have you tried “private browsing” mode?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Private+Browsing
Fixit mannOctober 6th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Oh sorry I see this is an old post for 3.0x
The private browsing mode is in 3.5x
Mark
@Sprocket999
That’s not a solution; That’s a workaround. I should have to disable my usage of the location bar completely. If you read around the ‘net, many people are upset with the location bar searching through their bookmarks.
I still don’t understand why this is so difficult to include as an option. I DO NOT want my bookmarks coming up when I’m searching for a website I have visited in the past. If I recently visited americanexpress.com, but I have About.com, AOL.com and another.com, all of these will show up in my quick results via the Location bar. If I have a website buried that talks about proposing to my g/f (which I am on the verge of doing) and she starts typing in proposal for her Thesis, this stupid feature will bring up my buried bookmarks.
It’s just poor design. The developers are forcing you to use a certain feature the way they want you to use it or else. Sure, turning off the location bar altogether is a work-around but that’s not a feasible solution IMO.
Make bookmark searching a configurable option. It’s really that simple.
enovyJune 18th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Try changing browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to TRUE.
I also have browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled;true set to TRUE.
I seem to be getting the behavior I want wish is auto complete the urls but only search through urls that I have typed in recently. It doesn’t include my bookmarks anymore.
Mark
And to make things even worse, that workaround doesn’t allow you to select the drop down arrow and get recently visited web addresses.
Again.. this isn’t what I would call progress. I won’t be downgrading to Firefox 3 until they fix this. I’d rather deal with the memory issues of Firefox2 than this.
Joe
This page is crashing my Firefox 3b4 every time I visit it, without fail (I’m posting this comment from IE). I have firebug 1.1 beta installed.
Sprocket999
@Sprocket999: “That’s not a solution; That’s a workaround. I should have to disable my usage of the location bar completely. If you read around the ‘net, many people are upset with the location bar searching through their bookmarks.”
Mark — you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Be thankful we found a way for you to keep your browsing habits discreet. This, in essence, is all that the many people around the ‘net, are REALLY looking for.
. . . you’re most welcome.
* * * * * * * * * * *
KHendros
I like how the new location bar sorts by the most recent site you visited, but I agree that the two line location is a tad bit much. I like the old style better, but the oldbar extension doesn’t provide saving your locations by the most recently visited site.
Garret
the location bar as of beta 4 is not good in xp. It also shows the web address from bookmarks which brings confusion… It looks so ordinary and the drop down menu from which we can view addresses does not look much visible. The big thing that i didn’t like is the go button is not always not available which creates difficulty… hope next version will improve on this…
I agree with Garret about the Go button! VERY annoying. Btw, there’s a hack to fix it! Do a google search for “Regain the persistent Go button in Firefox 3″ (WITH quotes) — it should be the 1st result — Nanci Barthelmess’ blog.
gb
I hate the new location bar. I am trying to search for google.
I want to go to ESPN.com. I type E and then i get http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ because that URL has a E in it. It is dumb. I hate this.. I am gonna try the oldbar now.
Sw
I’ve been developing my sites first and foremost with FF for years, but I’m tempted to leave Firefox over this. It really screws up my workflow. I hate it. The location bar has a purpose, which is to let you set the URL. It’s not a place to stick every search that might pop in your head. This serves the AOL idiots interests over the interests of those who actually know how to use the tool. I imagine my sites will not look as nice in FF once I find a replacement.
Stefan
I hate the new bar for a simple reason – I want to be able to match URLs only when I type stuff in the *URLbar*; The workarounds posted here do not really change the fact that no matter what you do, the text search is not against urls alone, but against website title pages as well.
An option such as “Only match URL” will be most certainly appreciated.
Garret
RC 1 is out but the location bar is the same… anyway we can’t expect it will be fixed as I was and the previous posts were talking about… I had to shift the reload button to the right hand side between location bar and search bar so that it would be easier to browse as the go button is not always available…
steve
I was JUST looking for a solution to this as well, I’m glad I am not the only one hating the idea of searching/suggesting bookmarks. I like the address bar–2 lines, I just DONT like it suggesting my bookmarks.
Sprocket, Mark is correct . It has nothing to do with having our cake and eating it too, there should be an easy configuration to allow users to turn off bookmark searching. . Marks example of his g/f finding his hidden propsal idea bookmarks is valid and I’m sure many others also have a valid reason for needing this “feature†configurable.
I TRULY HOPE SOMEONE can remedy this, I did the config-richtext thing and didnt like nothing coming up as that is NOT what I was looking to do
enovyJune 18th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Try changing browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to TRUE.
I also have browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled;true set to TRUE.
I seem to be getting the behavior I want wish is auto complete the urls but only search through urls that I have typed in recently. It doesn’t include my bookmarks anymore.
NotoriousJune 19th, 2008 at 7:58 am
I agree…. the addition of bookmarks to autocomplete should indeed be configurable…. I have some corporate webpages as bookmarks which I dont want ppl to see when typing an address in the location bar…. well, it bugs me so much that I’ll switch back to the old version of firefox…. this design change seems more like the “microsoft way” of forcing features on users….
me
like many others I found the awesome bar listing bookmarks irritating, unnecessary and impeding. some people have said that changing the max rich results value to zero works but it produces just that zero results (equally impeding) although some have said it doesn’t work changing the matchonlytyped to true works for me (FF3 rc1) I get only my history not bookmarks.
I should also note that I have browser.urlbar.maxRichResults set at 10 as I first noticed that recent history is listed first followed by bookmarks (But I still had some strays)
browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped true
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults 10
works for me
Rene
I personally hate the new address bar. It shows so much unfamiliar information. I don’t know where to look.
Not everybody is happy with new things. So why not make them optional?
Rene
disappointed
Like many others here, i find the inclusion of bookmarks in the new address bar extremely annoying. It’s not a matter of privacy for me, i just don’t see a reason for it. If i want to see my bookmarks, i’ll just click on bookmarks which is a mere half inch away from the address bar. If for some reason that half inch becomes too much for me to bear, i’ll add the bookmark icon right next to the address bar. I just don’t see any reason why bookmarks need to be included in the new address bar. At least make an option to eliminate bookmarks from the address bar.
Jim
E-mail from Mozilla on an option of turning off the features in the address bar.
Feedback from users and press have been overwhelmingly positive to date. There is a small but very vocal group of people who don’t like the change (comments have historically been a poor sample set, people don’t tend to praise in the same proportion as those who are complaining). If 1/3 of our users really hated the change, we’d be flooded with comments from 600,000 people.
As for why can’t we just add a pref, well, that is best explained as a cost/benefit case. Adding the old behaviour as a supported option means implementing a new and separate codepath, and maintaining testing and maintenance coverage for two distinct operating modes. That is anything but a low cost option, and only makes sense if we believe that users will be unable to adapt to what we believe is a better behaviour.
My suggestion is to use the following link, and simply ask for an off option, because as the last blurb from the e-mail states, WE BELIEVE IT IS A BETTER BEHAVIOUR.†My translation of what Mozilla has said is, We don’t like or listen to negative feedback, It’s to expensive to add, People complain too much and most impressive is, We will tell you what you like, we know better and I thought Microsoft was an Elitist company
NadiaJune 10th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I will stick with FF2, I don’t need all my history available to anyone who uses my computer simply by typing in the address bar
MDCSeptember 9th, 2008 at 9:16 am
And God forbid we tell them we don’t like a feature, they were so damn clever when they figured it out. Could their mommies have been wrong? No….that’s silly, all their ideas ARE special, it doesn’t matter what others say…..
Robbie
HATE HATE HATE the new address bar bringing up all this shit that I don’t want people to see and I don’t need. This is HORRIBLE. Like the way it used to work. This may make me go back to FF2 it’s so bad.
pooface
Someone should make a post of this on DIGG. Maybe enough people can be encouraged to send feedback that they’ll change it. I’d do it myself but I’m trying to stay off that site as I tend to get addicted and stay up all night reading articles and other crap.
Jim
type in the address bar the words
about:config
click that you will be carful and then find
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults set this to zero and it will disable the address bar suggestions. then restart firefox
now why Mozilla is not allowing easy access to this option is another story. This could be added so easy to the option’s menu, and almost all of the complaints would go away. I believe it is still there it just showing zero suggestions that’s close enough to a disable to me
commenterJune 17th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Why do people keep suggesting this browser.urlbar.maxRichResults non-solution? I tried that, and typing ‘l’ (L) in the address bar brought up a single url… beginning with S! Mad.
enovyJune 18th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
In about:config
Try changing browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to TRUE.
I also have browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled;true set to TRUE.
I seem to be getting the behavior I want wish is auto complete the urls but only search through urls that I have typed in recently. It doesn’t include my bookmarks anymore.
Jean-Marc
the issue with browser.urlbar.maxRichResults is that it’s removing the drop-down list completly. The perfect solution will keep the drop-down, remove the highlight, and keep the search on the URLs, and not the tags, titles, bookmarks and so on.
I spend 4 hours on google to find a solution to remove this crappy new improvment, and I’m still not able.
JM
Paul_BagsApril 28th, 2009 at 1:04 am
The perfect solution is not having some bloated useless crap search through lists in the background in my browser, causing it to hang so bad i can even look at another tab while I wait. Whats wrong with an address bar that I can type a URL into and press enter, none of this second guessing me, none of this searching through crap in the background?
Patrick
I don’t like the idea of having bookmark sites displayed in the address bar either. Well, first I thought it was a bug on the FF3 until I read all these comments. What a joke! Indeed, this is a very poor design in my view. Bookmarks are sort of private matters. Highly suggest to make this feature configurable at least.
kong
i just gave up trying to fix it and went back to ff2.. i hope they take it out soon… and that “oldbar” crap doesnt work with ff3!!
Eddie
Oh dear, not being to switch it off is a HUGE mistake! I certainly will not be putting FF3 on my home PC for everyone to see my buried bookmarks. I wonder what Opera is like these days?
commenter
Okay, so I tried it for a bit longer, and it seems to have ‘learned’ the URLs that I want to bring up when I type their initial letter… Fingers crossed.
Michael
I was shocked how bad this “awesomebar” was. I almost rolled back to firefox 2 because of it. Thankfully https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227 worked good enough (oldbar extension). Thx for that link!
karro
solution that helped me to avoid going back to FF 2.x:
in about:config
browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped = true
browser.urlbar.maxrichresults = 5
and oldbar 1.2
now FF behaves as before :)
OTOH, I have enabled cleaning of history on FF exit, therefore I’m not sure if it will work with history enabled.
ANGRY MOB
The new address/location bar is fu**** bullshit.ARGHHHHHHHHHHH
Bebop
The new location bar is a reason of my consideration about the browser switch. To Opera for example. I simply hate the new location bar so much that I can’t stand with it.
Allister
This new ‘feature’ is just like Microsoft’s paperclip. Some of these new security ‘features’ are the same. Whatever happened to providing for user freedom? This is nannying at best. I’m sticking with version 2.
Tom
A semi-solution is to set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to true, browser.urlbar.matchBehavior to 2 and to install oldbar. But it still searches in page titles.
JJ Persaud
Love FireFox 2 and wax lyrical about it to those that will listen. Hated IE and wanted something I could hold up to others as an example of what an ideal browser was like.
However, absolutely hate the new “awesome bar” feature – it’s just plain useless to me and very annoying. Many more of those kind of features and I will be looking for a new browser again. It doesn’t matter that it can be disabled, it’s probably still searching even if you don’t want it to. I would advise the FireFox team against considering anything else like that either. These are the sort of things that made us switch away from IE in the first instance.
On the positive side, I do like being able to more easily disable add-ons and plug-ins.
So far, not too happy after a long awaited arrival, but will give it a couple of weeks.
JJ
I wonder if anyone will have make custom build Firefox 3 with disable “awesomebar” ?
FirefoxUserSince1999
I am pissed completely off with this shitty autocomplete bullshit feature. I liked it the way it was. Mozilla seriously needs to release 2 versions of Firefox each time, 1 that has no modifications to anything other then code to make it run better or add security. Then the other version has all the bullshit. They could call one the BS Version and the other. I get sick and tired of all the bullshit graphics and shit. All i want is a browser that’s fast, secure, and doesn’t intrude in my life with some bullshit description. I’ve been to these sites before, I don’t need a fucking description of the site. m
JMS
> JJ
Me. I download the code and I’m building it. If everything is working fine, I think I will be able to disable the search in the titles, bookmarks and so on.
I will keep you posted here.
JM
olm
I don’t have much to add, I am just voting to have this crappy new address bar removed for good. In version 2 it was a ultrafast way to get to the most used urls (which I could interpret with no problems, thank you). Now it is a poor imitation of a search bar which looks slowly in stupid places for unuseful results. Worse still, it is hard to get rid of it, and I wasn’t able to do it properly. I’m retreating to version 2.
Jim
We can ask for the old toolbar here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=407836
Just add a comment at the end of the page… maybe they’ll listen to our request!
Resolutor
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
steve
Don’t install FF3 – this location bar is just terrible. They should revert back to the FF2 bar as quickly as possible and re-release as FF3.0.1.
It is totally unusable as it stands.
Tom Loveridge
I HATE HATE HATE the new location bar. Bloody awful idea – for example if I type in an “a” in order to bring up my regular websites with a url starting in “a”, I now get this utterly confusing and virtually unreadable window of garbage popping up. I even get sites and sub-pages I’ve never been to and have no intention of ever going to! It’s FUCKING AWFUL!!! Thankfully the “Oldbar” add-on seems to make it work much like dear old FF2 without resorting to all the under-bonnet tweaking people mention above.
Why do we always get one step backwards for every step forward?
quasi42
I don’t believe the attitude here. Not liking a new feature is one thing but HATE, HATE, HATE? Sounds like a knee jerk reaction to me. Sounds like a lot of the other ones that HATE the new location bar install Firefox 3.0, type in one lousy letter in the location bar and expect frickin’ miracles. Let me give you people a clue here what happens after you use this new feature for more than a whole hour.
For example, I type in:
“a” and I get all my regular websites that contain an “a” near the beginning, the ones I visit most at the top of the list.
“f” and I get all my regular websites that contain an “f” near the beginning, the ones I visit most at the top of the list.
“w” and I get all my regular websites that contain an “w” near the beginning, the ones I visit most at the top of the list (not one site beginning with “www”, ever!.
How did I get this? By using the new feature for at least 3 days so it could learn how I use the browser and what sites I visit on a regular basis. This new feature is adaptive and needs time to learn your surfing habits and favorite sites . I also have to type in more than one bloody letter once on a while, God forbid, but never more than 3 once the location bar has learned what I want on a regular basis. The more you use it, the better it works.
And by the way, there is absolutely no way you can get any result in the drop down list of a place you’ve never been to. It’s impossible…it doesn’t work that way. The new location bar draws only on your Bookmarks, History and Tags (if you have any). In other words, if it’s in the list, you (or some else who used the browser) has been there before.
And saying that it Firefox 3.0 shouldn’t have been released unless without a way to turn it off (no, it’s not as simple as some people think) or anything else the users wanted or thought needed fixing was incorporated in the new version, then it never would have been released. Nor would any other software or OS out there. There’s absolutely no way that can happen.
With that said, I do have to agree that there needs to be a way to filter the results that appear in the drop down list but I also know that after 34 months of development, missed release dates, extra QA and testing and release candidates, the filtering (and other features) had to be left out until Firefox 3.1 when “History” data will be incorporated into the “Places” SQLite databases. Once that is done I would imagine there’ll be a new
KatatonicAugust 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am
It is not adaptive I have been using it for several weeks & abhor the location bar (notice I did not say HATE). I type in the first 3-4-5 letters & I get EVERYTHING I have visited that has those letters ANYWHERE in it’s description. (ex I type the letters WAL expecting to get a clients site, but I get everything that has wal in the descrip. walls, walkers, wallets, etc. If I went there & god forbid it has those letters, it lists it) That is wrong & useless & a waste of my time. I have been a loyal fan & user for many years. I refuse to use IE (except to check for browser compatibility) Netscape is a bloated overgrown beast I use only for the same reason. FF was my favorite browser and with the advent of this development it is fast becoming one of my least favorite. It may soon fall to the bottom with IE and used only as a browser check.
I have endorsed FF to my colleagues & friends but until this is fixed I will not recommend it to anyone. If they have FF2 I will suggest they do not upgrade until this issue is resolved.
Sure release a new version great but to then deny that people are unhappy with it & say that it will not be addressed is ridiculous & bad customer service ( I know you get what you pay for )
MOZILLA wake up listen to the people & resolve this now. I cannot even clear the damn thing so that I can start fresh the more site I visit the more crap it wants me to wade thru this is NOT an improvement.
OK my rant is complete Thank you to everyone who is attempting to fix this issue & a big FU to those who say “learn to live with it, this is how we feel you should work”
Kirk MAugust 11th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Hi Katatonic,
I have to agree with you that if that is the kind of results you get when using the Location bar then no wonder you’re frustrated. Firefox 3.0.* is the fastest thing out there and not just according to official tests but my own as well so it’s ashame that a funky location bar is spoiling it for you.
After all this time since the initial release of Firefox 3.0 and all the using and testing thereof it is readily apparent that a significant group of FX users are experiencing this exact same issue while the rest (majority) of users are not, including myself. I’ve put a lot of research into this and this “non-adapting” location bar is very real for some folks. For those where the location bar works properly and adapts very quickly to how you use the browser, it’s an excellent feature but I can imagine what it’s like of you’re getting the kind of results you and others are getting.
What really needs to be done is to find out why this is happening to so many when it’s not happening to others instead of just telling folks to “learn to live with it” and the only way to do that is to stop commenting about this issues on places like “Mozilla Links” (they can’t do anything about it) and head to Mozillazine forums (Firefox bugs thread) and state the problem succinctly along with your OS information, list of extensions, whether you upgraded to FX3 over FX2 or that it was a clean install (the only way to go) and the Firefox version number. There could be any number of things that are causing the location bar results to go wonky and enough comments in the bugs thread as I described above could actually be used to find a pattern to all this.
Anyway, just my two cents worth. :D
Paul_BagsApril 28th, 2009 at 1:34 am
The browser shouldn’t be learning what I do, the browser should behave predictably. Adaptive behaviour is not predictable behaviour to users, it is in fact an obstruction to use of a product.
How would you like it if I rearranged all your stuff in your house on a daily basis? AND stopped you from using anything until I was done? Thats the new location bar for you.
quasi42
To continue (fat fingered the keyboard),
…there should be a new option in the “Options” dialog box that will allow the user to choose what data they wish the Location Bar drop-down list to display. There might even be a way to choose whether to include the urls of each site to be displayed or not.
So if you feel you have to revert back to Firefox 2.0 until sometime towards the end of the year when version 3.1 is released then so be it. In the meantime, I and a whole lot of other 3.0 users will be happy with this new feature and will also be happy to wait until the next maintenance release (3.1) for the filtering to be incorporated. HATE-ing is such a waste of time and energy.
Ben
Tom — but then after hitting “a” (or more) and scrolling down to find what you really wanted, it learns what you like, and puts those results at the top.
I don’t find any problem with the new URL bar. It learns quickly.
Alan Aardvark
Count me among those who hate the Firefox 3 location bar.
Not only that, but I’m very concerned about two related security issues:
First, there appears to be no way to delete browsing history. “Clear Private Data” with everything checked does not delete the location bar’s knowledge of sites I’ve visited in the past. Even more disturbing, sites I visited using Firefox 2.x.x are showing up in the FF3 location bar. That means that even though I didn’t know it, FF2 was retaining my browsing history, again, despite the impression that it was ‘clearing all private data’ before. I hate to say it, but I’m going to start investigating other browsers to see if there’s one that’s more secure.
If anyone knows of a sure-fire way to erase the FF browsing history, and to turn off the location bar auto-complete, please post!
Thanks
Garret
Don’t worry guys, 3.1 is coming by this year’s end… so we can be hopeful that this issue will be fixed… Percy you can persuade Mozilla developers to check the blog comments here may be…
Andrew
OK, well, since apparently it takes 600,000 comments before these morons decide to make software that their users want, I’ll jump on the bandwagon.
I’m done with FF. The Mozilla people are worse than the MS people. At least IE doesn’t pretend not to be a piece of shit. Uninstall button, here I come.
(I could roll back to FF2, but, since FF3 is out, I’m sure support (like security fixes) for FF2 will last another 45 minutes or so… just like they did with v1 when 2 came out. which means that FF is now useless.)
Way to go, guys. Someone finally took a significant chunk of the browser market from MS, and they decided to deliberately fuck up the project, and then tell us that since the developers are the smart ones, they should decide what features we like.
rod[3]
The “awesome bar” is a terrible idea. Adaptive technology? My microwave didn’t take three days to “adapt” to how I warm my coffee; it does what I tell it to do. I demand the same from my browser. Also, I’m not convinced the config tweaks do anything other than hide the search results; I want the algorithm and all components Shut Down. Stored data is always a security risk.
PCNerd
The new bar is both annoying and cool.
The annoying part is that it does not search the beginnings of urls from the start.
Another annoying part is the bookmarks in the “awesome bar”. But that can be shut off (that is good for me).
Cool part is that it remember a lot of urls. And if you don’t remember the whole url you can just type some of it.
I haven’t used it for so long time yet, but I would explore it a bit more before I can tell if its crap or not.
Ben
Rod — you’re correct, the microwave is like a dumb terminal. What happens is YOU adapted to your microwave’s power, since it can’t adapt to you. You don’t get the perfect temperature the 1st time you heat up food or beverage… you may have to adjust the time. After a few times, you have a pretty good idea of what it takes to heat up what you want.
The new Firefox URLbar is the same way. After a few uses, it learns what “temperature” you like your URLs.
Security risk? YOU control how much data is stored in your browser… via history, cookies and cache. The technology of the URLbar has nothing to do with security. If someone is sitting at your computer to type in the URLbar, then all your ’security’ is already gone.
Rusty Shakelford
The RetardBar is very annoying.
Why should I even have to spend day after day to try & teach this completely useless feature about my browsing? I tried it & it would not give me anything useful when I started typing a URL. I did give it time to learn. It just doesn’t work well when your browsing isn’t the exact same site every time.
The developers should have known that making it the only option for a URL bar, was going to make some people very mad. I don’t want my URL bar to give me a bunch of sites that have absolutely nothing to do with the URL that I am starting to type. I shouldn’t have to search for the URL I want by typing in a few words to get it when I should only have to type a couple letters of the URL.
Firefox 3? Thumbs Up! | The Sundries Shack
[...] not inclined to change the bar back to the way it was with Firefox 2, but at least I know I can with relative ease thanks to the oldbar add-on. As with nearly everything else about Firefox, the address bar (are [...]
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Really I am not very happy with the new bar eventhough some people mentioned it as awesome.
Bob
I liked when you could easily find the sites you had visited in the old location bar. The “awesome” bar is quite annoying and wastes my time trying to find what I want. It’s just easier to either type the url in manually or go to bookmarks. I hate when things are programmed to out think you. And the sheer size of the thing is annoying. Well, you know the old adage, “fix it till it’s broken”.
Trevor
Absolutely hate the new address bar. I don’t want firefox to “look through” the bookmarks. Almost enough to uninstall firefox until I found an add-on for it.
Barnaby
I also hate the new address bar search behaviour. It’s counter-intuitive and inefficient. That and the realplayer video downloader plugin (not mozilla’s problem, I know) are enough to keep me on FF2 even though I love the FF3 pagezoom.
Macavity
One of the main reasons that I switched to Firefox in the first place was that I hate having “features” rammed down my throat. Yes, I can disable the ‘AwfulBar’, but the point is that I should not have to. Give me the option to check out new features and ENABLE them if I want them, but please do not foist them off as ‘improvements’. I found the AwfulBar AND the new two-line format is extremely annoyingly CUTE. I hate cute. I have always loved Firefox, and I don’t object to incremental changes. However, if this is a taste of things to come, then I’ll have to find another browser that doesn’t make me grind my teeth.
total noob
I installed the oldbar addon, and for a while the location bar worked the way I was used to; I store all my daily visited links there (the actual bookmark folder is huuuge), easily chosen from the drop-down menu. (I never typed anything in there, just clicked on the addresses I’d saved in the menu.) Now it’s suddenly started again storing certain addresses I have not entered in the address bar in any way, just visited. I’m not yet sure why it saves some addresses and not all of them, and I can’t get rid of the unwanted addresses unless I clear my history… which then also wipes out the entries I wanted to keep. (I *could* search and delete the history files actually needed to get rid of, but you know how bloated the site history folder gets after a day’s surfing?)
Does anyone know of a way to make this work exactly like in the old Firefox? I just want the damn thing to keep only the addresses I personally type or paste in the address bar, not some random page I don’t even want to come back to later.
mr anon
I just got prompted to install a firefox upgrade and now I am looking for somewhere to complain.
I hate the new way that when I start typing it prompts with two lines and also all sorts of info that it drags up from somewhere. Even if I tell it to delete history and personal info etc, it still seems to have plenty to prompt me on.
I want it to work like the old firefox.
Elalyr
Also annoyed by the new address bar; found this page by looking for ways to disable it and go back to the old style. I agree with folks above, I hate having “improvements” foisted on me that are worse than the old way. I don’t need my address bar to tell me that http://www.cnn.com is CNN, and so forth. It’s useless information that clutters up the interface. Clutter like that is more a Microsoft thing, a consequence of a product marketed to the lowest common denominator. It’s sad if that’s the way Firefox intends to go.
Mike
The Firefox address bar drives me nuts?! Who are the numbskulls that forced this feature? My goodness, make it an option, but power users like speed and standardization…
Jean-Marc
Lite web browser with no “drive me crazy” address bar: Google Chrome. Faster to start, no useless functionnalties, but few things are still missing.
http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html
JM
Jeremy
After much trial and error, I found a very easy fix. Basically this fix will still allow the new “awesome bar” functions, without ever displaying your bookmarks. Not sure if you need to also have the “Hide Unvisited” Add-On, but here ya go:
Edit userchrome.css
Create a file called userChrome.css in the Firefox profile folder’s chrome sub-folder (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\Your user name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.yyy\chrome on Windows XP.
Inside userChrome.css, put this code:
richlistitem[type="bookmark"]
{
display: none !important;
}
Then close and restart Firefox.
Note: This will prevent bookmark results from __ever__ showing up in the autocomplete list, even if you visit them and they become part of history.
I got this from http://bbayles.googlepages.com/disable_slb.html
Jeremy
Oh, and after some more trial and error, here are the about:config settings that work best for me.
browser.urlbar.autoFill = true
browser.urlbar.matchBehaviour = 0
browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped = false
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = 12
Basically, what you get with these settings is all the function intended, except no bookmarks will ever show up in the drop down list, even if visited. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about clearing private data in order for your bookmarks not to appear in the list.
Oh, and you don’t need the Hide Unvisited Add-On.
yaRight
To hell with ALL adress bar searching, it leads to far to much intrusion ability, to much infection, to much risk at becoming a victim of hackers PISSANT PUNKS…
The URL bar should only hold the URL’s visited, nobody should risk the assult of invasionary attacks through useing it as a search tool leaving you open for stepping into a evil scripted site, JUST LIKE PREFETCH DOES….
TITLES PLUG UP the ease of seeing and grabbing a recent or regular site you go to.
PUNKS do not know anything about useing browsers, they only have a year or two at programing and use, thus they think OOHH THATS COOL LETS MAKE EVERYONE GET IT…
WELL F#$% YOU!
Take you damn punk ideas and shove up where the sun dont shine. If I wanted it I would ASK FOR IT,,,,
AND I DIDNT ASK FOR FIREFOXES BS IDEAS!!!!
Im tired of FIXING your mistakes, re-working your stupid coded ideas.
EXPLOITS DO NOT COME FROM A BASIC BROWSER! THEY COME FROM THE DUMB SHIT IDEAS YOU ADD IN THE CODE!
So, MOZILLA,,, EAT SHIT!
yaRight
PS…..
My research finds that the URL change in FIREFOX 3, is the MOST HATED change. NOBODY I WORK WITH APPROVES IT IN ANY WAY!
I work with a lot of long time computer techs, coders, etc, who all have far more than 15 years full time computer work experience.
Shove this dumb idea out with all the ideas of the pass that went down too.
This oldbar script should be a patch to totally take out the extra trash, strickly be a recent history, no search or type anticipating bs.
We all hate how you type one letter, and the damn thing interupts you, then you have to click your mouse again to type the next letter, or you have fight the damn blinking of some trash to get your curser into place to type,,, FIREFOX SUCKS
Java hackers can steel your identity in firefox so EASY,,,,,,, too much BS in firefox, too flimsy, too open…
abhi
Thats the crappiest address bar ever made !
Its extremely irritating. I tried messing with – about:config, but no use.
I uninstalled it and reinstalled 2.0.0.14, today it updated to 2.0.0.17.
I agree with –> yaRight
I dont know how mozilla guys thought of such crappy address bar, and implemented it. A big design flaw.
Patrick Bateman
What is amazing is that the majority of complaints could be fixed very, very easily.
1. Include an option to match results by URL only (from left to right, ignoring “www.”) so that when I type “g…” it suggests “google.com” not “digg.com”. I find it staggering that people designing a web browser do not realise that this is how most people want to use the address bar.
2. Include an option to tell the bar what data it may use to build its list of suggestions, including the ability to remove bookmarks and to clear private data from the possible suggestions.
Both of these options should be trivial to add. Why not just do it and make people happy?
Like many others I am considering going back to FF2 at this stage.
Bob the Chef
Y’all hate the new one just because your bookmarked porn shows up in the list whenever you type in an URL.
MrCoreyJanuary 1st, 2009 at 10:06 am
I wish that were the only reason for me. I haven’t run FF3 final on a Windows system yet, but I find that the search takes FOREVER on the version that ships with Ubuntu. That drives me up the wall! There is no good reason why this should happen on my 2Ghz computer.
This “convenience” that’s supposed to make my life easier has lowered the quality of my computing experience significantly, as I use my computer mostly for browsing the web.
TomH
Add my voice to those who hate the new location bar. Before we had a logical separation between addresses I entered, history, and bookmarks. Now they’re all jumbled together.
James
There are items that show up in my location bar in FF3 that WILL NOT GO AWAY NO MATTER WHAT I DO. Supposedly, the only items that do this are bookmarks. These items do indeed have the golden start next to them, but I have never bookmarked them, nor do they show up anywhere in my list of bookmarks.
I would love to see this rectified. Thanks.
wray
How do i open a window now without the new feature location bar.
this is a security violation and a pain in the you know where.
we develop graphical and user apps where we don’t want a location bar. We want a deterministic inside window size for user input. We sometimes open a window as a help or dialog, returning a value and this just gets in the way.
Very annoying. With 7000 plus users complaining.
How does one ensure this is closed, when an app opens a window, other than testing if browser is firefox ABORT! Please use ie
Is there javascript we can use to close the thing.
Otherwise i am a fan of firefox.
A concerned developer
i avoided the upgrade from 2 until December because of this, now i am thinking of recommending or forcing the use of another browser.
Fixit mannOctober 6th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I’m not sure I understand this post, and it IS an older post, but have you tried “Prism” yet? That might be just what you’re looking for. It will open a single web page without ANY toolbars such as menus, buttons, URL bar (but you can set it to show what URL you’re on)
It did take me a couple tries to get it to work, but it’s very handy to open my email just to check for messages without the any toolbars.
Another Disgruntled User
Changing places.frecency.bookmarks to 0 stops the Awfulbar from searching through bookmarks, which is a small step on the way to disabling it.
Setting browser.urlbar.search.chunkSize to 0 stops the Awfulbar from playing back bogus URLs, but it also means it won’t record recently-entered URLs, which I do want.
At the moment, I’d say turn the chunkSize to 1000, browse your preferred URLs by cut-and-paste into the URL bar, make sure you do so *in the correct order*, and visit those URLs multiple times. (Reload them all about half a dozen times). Then turn chunkSize back to 0, and while it won’t do the *right* thing, it’ll at least do the *wrong* thing less often.
Ugh. I avoided FF2 due to performance issues. I’m still seriously considering going back to FF1.54 over this. The awesomebar is the suck, and I refuse to embrace the suck. The only real solution is to have an about:config option to disable it completely.
Jean-Marc
Which FF version are you using? I’m not able to find places.frecency.bookmarks option into the 3.0.6 :(
I’ve reverted back to FF2 to pretty all of my stations except one to test it, I have have to admit that I’m very hapy with FF2. Way more than with FF3 :(
JM
John S
I’m not a techie, just some guy that uses Firefox because it is better than IE. I really hate this new location bar. It not only clutters up my browser when I am tying in the address bar, it is a major privacy problem. I have the browser set to clear private data, but the crap in the location bar does not clear. I don’t want people snooping into my browsing!
Fixit mannOctober 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Upgrade to FF 3.5 it has a private browsing feature…
Also with a little work and some add-ons you can get it to look and work just like 2.0. (3.0 never did this as well.)
frank
My history is still saved on my location bar even if i clear my private data, past websites like facebook, youtube and even porn sites can still be located from the location bar. I have tried to uninstalling mozilla firefox, and then reinstalling but it made no difference.
FerdinandSeptember 21st, 2009 at 12:42 am
There is a new privacy setting in Firefox 3.5. You can choose what to show in the location bar.
@rita: press F1 in Firefox and search
ShaunSeptember 25th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Unfortunately, that still doesn’t entirely solve the problems. Even if you have it set to just make suggestions from History, it pulls from my ENTIRE history, including sub-pages. This means that if I want to go to, say, CNN.com, and I type cnn, I get a list of all the pages I’ve visited on CNN from my history. Even worse, if I type CNN then ctrl-enter to add the www. and .com to the address, then Firefox seems to like to pick some random article I’ve visited instead of just doing what I want it to do and go to just plain old cnn.com.
Florin
I just disabled the dropdown menu from address bar like sprocket999 suggested. For me it was the best solution.
Clive
Is there anyway to disable the new urlbar algorithm so it only focuses on the URL name and not the description etc. of the website when a user starts entering characters?
Some people may love that feature but there are quite a few people who rely on just typing the url name and don’t care about/focus on the description of it.
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FRANK VENTURAJanuary 25th, 2009 at 12:58 am
I totally agree with the comments made. Why fix something that was not broken, did you ever heard “If ain’t broken don’t fix it” ? I dislike this “improvement”
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