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> Safari's "omnibar" is superior to Firefox's. Safari actually suggests web sites, which I use all the time. Wikipedia is a major one. Start typing "Richard Fey
by bhauer 8y ago
> Safari's "omnibar" is superior to Firefox's. Safari actually suggests web sites, which I use all the time. Wikipedia is a major one. Start typing "Richard Fey", for example, and the first hit will be the Wikipedia page for Richard Feynman, complete with a short summary and photo. Firefox forces me through a Google search.
I don't use a Mac, so I am not sure if there are other features of the Safari omnibar which are appealing. But the example you provided is especially concerning to me since it suggests that Safari is sending user input in the location bar to some external service for analysis. This is what allows the browser to find and render a snippet of a Wikipedia article that best matches what you've typed in the location bar. If I were using Safari, I would definitely be looking for a way to turn that off. I can't tell you how many times I've (accidentally) pasted something into the location bar that I would never voluntarily send to any third parties.
On Firefox, I have a Wikipedia bookmark that uses the 'w' keyword and uses the URL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
So I would type "w Richard Feynman" to reach the same destination. Maybe not quite as elegant, but I have another that does a Wikipedia search if I don't feel like typing the whole name of an article.
For whatever it's worth, I find the Firefox omnibar superb for many reasons, one being that it prioritizes my bookmarks and my history higher than directing me to a third-party search engine.
- atombender 8y agoHere's an album of examples showing some "magical" Safari suggestions: https://imgur.com/a/dY2SWKB https://imgur.com/a/dY2SWKB Yes, I use also an extension that lets me type "w richard feynman". I also use DuckDuckGo, which has a lot of these shortcuts. But Safari will still offer the first "best hit", when I'm not sure where to look something up. As for privacy, I'm already deep in Apple. They take care of my stuff: My entire Safari history (synced with iCloud), backup of my iPhone, my iMessage chat history, and a lot of other things. Given their stance on privacy, I choose to trust them. I've never accidentally pasted anything in the search bar.
- yorwba 8y ago> but I have another that does a Wikipedia search if I don't feel like typing the whole name of an article. You don't really need two bookmarks for that. Wikipedia will redirect to the article if the search string happens to be exactly the same.
- bhauer 8y agoNice, thank you!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- perfunctory 8y agoI am using duckduckgo extension and I am typing "!w Richard Feynman", or "Richard Feynman !w"
- zapzupnz 8y agoThe feature which the person was talking about is called search suggestions and, indeed, the searches get routed through the selected search provider. There is a related feature, Safari Suggestions, which seems to use the system's Spotlight search service to provide other suggestions. For people's information, these can be turned off in Safari preferences -> Search.