9 ms·

One unique Firefox feature I love that I don't see talked about often is how awesome Firefox's address bar suggestions are. I can type just a snippet of a URL o

by cdrini 4y ago

One unique Firefox feature I love that I don't see talked about often is how awesome Firefox's address bar suggestions are. I can type just a snippet of a URL or a web page title and it'll instantly show me all matching URLs I've visited, whether on my desktop or on my phone. It's become my primary second brain for finding Google docs, or articles I've read, or GitHub issues. It's usually only a few characters before it finds exactly what I want. Eg I type in "Ed"? It shows the URL to my "editions in solr" GitHub issues I've been working on recently. I vaguely recall an article I read months ago on CSS grid? I type "grid guide" and bam it's the first suggestion. The spreadsheet I made about user languages? "sheets lang". That vague API I can never remember the parameters to? Just type "/query.json?" And I get all my previous requests as examples! I find Chrome's address bar has been way less reliable and much more frequently just gives me Google autocomplete suggestions -- even when I know that I visited a URL recently that should match!

dandanua 4y ago
You can also add tags to bookmarks and let it search only through bookmarks. Now I just bookmark everything, so I don't need to use google's search a second time and filter again all that SEO and other crap. Moreover, I even bookmark some of my local files, since adequate tagging capabilities in file systems are still technologies from future, apparently.
throw10920 4y ago
To add to this, my experience has been that Chrome's address bar does only matching on whole "fragments" of URLs - that is, if I visited a URL with /foobarbaz/ in the name, Firefox will match that with "bar" while Chrome won't - which is pretty terrible behavior. And then there's the bookmarks mess, lack of tree-style tabs, and crippled ad-blocker API. As an information management tool, Firefox is light-years ahead of Chrome.
- sp332 4y ago
  I've only been using Chrome for about a year, but if I want the find something in my history, I have to open the history window (ctrl-h). The address bar is very inconsistent about returning pages that I've been to recently or often.
  - prox 4y ago
    Hope you will take FF for a spin!
jotm 4y ago
That's by design, to feed Google Search (and show you ads). Firefox has that, too, but you can easily turn it off so it will only show suggestions based on your history. Not sure about Chrome.
robonerd 4y ago
Firefox's address bar always seems to show me example.com/xyz when I want example.com, but shows me example.com when I want example.com/xyz. Furthermore, sometimes the "switch to tab" suggestion is at the top, and other times it isn't. If they picked one and stuck to it, I'd get used to it either way and be a happy camper. But the inconsistency drives me up a wall. I don't know how this compares to Chrome, I haven't used that shit in years.
- GeoAtreides 4y ago
  if you want example.com, type exam in the awesomebar and example.bar will show up in suggestions, if, of course, you visited it before or if it's bookmarked. if you want example.com/xyz, type example xyz or example x or just xyz.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > if you want example.com, type exam in the awesomebar and example.bar will show up in suggestions I just tried it. I have example.com in my history, and typed "exam". Example.com is the second thing firefox suggests. Before it, is a duckduckgo image search result page for the query "botanist", with an image titled "Young Botanist Examines The Plants In A Greenhouse Stock Photo". Firefox is picking up the "exam" in "Examines" and puts that result before example.com. I don't really care which is first, I just want one or the other to be consistently first.
    - GeoAtreides 4y ago
      Please go to: Settings(preferences) --> Search Then: Search Suggestions: Disable: Show search suggestions in address bar results That should be it. Below, go to Change settings for other address bar suggestions it will navigate to: Address Bar / When using the address bar, suggest Disable or enable as you see fit. I think the Search engines under the "Address Bar" is about the custom search engines one can define (i have a custom search for youtube, for example: y <search term>). A better guide here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-autocomplete-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-autocomplet...
newscracker 4y ago
> One unique Firefox feature I love that I don't see talked about often is how awesome Firefox's address bar suggestions are. That’s actually called the “Awesome Bar”, which was first introduced in Firefox 3 (which was 14 years ago). [1] It has been improved over time. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.0
cassepipe 4y ago
It gets much better when you disable search suggestions then you only have results from your browsing history/bookmarks. And in the end if you get no results you just launch a search anyways. There was a way to configure the relative weight of boomarks/history but I can't find it anymore. Also worthy of notice, if you start with * in the search bar you only get bookmarks results and with ^ you get history results. Finally % is for tabs (on synced devices too) !
- clairity 4y ago
  that's what i do too, disable suggestions so everything i type doesn't get sent to $searchEngine. i also make use of a few keywords for my most frequently visited sites (like 'hn' for hacker news) so that my keywords always override firefox's dynamic suggestions in case of any conflicts. i just learned about the ^ % * prefixes a few months ago, and now use them all the time.
- n8henrie 4y ago
  Using % to deal with the shameful number of tabs I have open is a killer feature.
black_puppydog 4y ago
This. Ever since version 2 or so, the Firefox autocompletion has made me never use bookmarks. It's simply that good. As others have said, it requires some tweaking nowadays. If anyone at mozilla is reading... why?! I mean, I get it, newbies... but... why?! Anyhow, bookmarks and keeping them, clicking through endless expanding nested menus of them, just the very concept... very much something for the hostages of a corporation that wants every contact with the web to start (and end) with a visit to google.com
jrochkind1 4y ago
> I can type just a snippet of a URL or a web page title and it'll instantly show me all matching URLs I've visited I think Chrome does this too, no? Maybe Firefox does it better?
Arnavion 4y ago
Amazing. That is the one feature of Firefox I hate so much I had to write an extension that uses a regex-based whitelist to allow entries in my browser history. Otherwise my history, and thus autocomplete suggestions, is full of URls from single-page applications (webmail etc) that differ only in the 1000-character-long hashes in the URL. Whatever logic Chromium does to filter out this chaff from autocomplete works much better for me.

by cdrini 4y ago

dandanua 4y ago

You can also add tags to bookmarks and let it search only through bookmarks. Now I just bookmark everything, so I don't need to use google's search a second time and filter again all that SEO and other crap. Moreover, I even bookmark some of my local files, since adequate tagging capabilities in file systems are still technologies from future, apparently.

throw10920 4y ago

To add to this, my experience has been that Chrome's address bar does only matching on whole "fragments" of URLs - that is, if I visited a URL with /foobarbaz/ in the name, Firefox will match that with "bar" while Chrome won't - which is pretty terrible behavior. And then there's the bookmarks mess, lack of tree-style tabs, and crippled ad-blocker API. As an information management tool, Firefox is light-years ahead of Chrome.

sp332 4y ago
I've only been using Chrome for about a year, but if I want the find something in my history, I have to open the history window (ctrl-h). The address bar is very inconsistent about returning pages that I've been to recently or often.
- prox 4y ago
  Hope you will take FF for a spin!

jotm 4y ago

That's by design, to feed Google Search (and show you ads). Firefox has that, too, but you can easily turn it off so it will only show suggestions based on your history. Not sure about Chrome.

robonerd 4y ago

Firefox's address bar always seems to show me example.com/xyz when I want example.com, but shows me example.com when I want example.com/xyz. Furthermore, sometimes the "switch to tab" suggestion is at the top, and other times it isn't. If they picked one and stuck to it, I'd get used to it either way and be a happy camper. But the inconsistency drives me up a wall. I don't know how this compares to Chrome, I haven't used that shit in years.

GeoAtreides 4y ago
if you want example.com, type exam in the awesomebar and example.bar will show up in suggestions, if, of course, you visited it before or if it's bookmarked. if you want example.com/xyz, type example xyz or example x or just xyz.
- robonerd 4y ago
  > if you want example.com, type exam in the awesomebar and example.bar will show up in suggestions I just tried it. I have example.com in my history, and typed "exam". Example.com is the second thing firefox suggests. Before it, is a duckduckgo image search result page for the query "botanist", with an image titled "Young Botanist Examines The Plants In A Greenhouse Stock Photo". Firefox is picking up the "exam" in "Examines" and puts that result before example.com. I don't really care which is first, I just want one or the other to be consistently first.
  - GeoAtreides 4y ago
    Please go to: Settings(preferences) --> Search Then: Search Suggestions: Disable: Show search suggestions in address bar results That should be it. Below, go to Change settings for other address bar suggestions it will navigate to: Address Bar / When using the address bar, suggest Disable or enable as you see fit. I think the Search engines under the "Address Bar" is about the custom search engines one can define (i have a custom search for youtube, for example: y <search term>). A better guide here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-autocomplete-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-autocomplet...

newscracker 4y ago

> One unique Firefox feature I love that I don't see talked about often is how awesome Firefox's address bar suggestions are. That’s actually called the “Awesome Bar”, which was first introduced in Firefox 3 (which was 14 years ago). [1] It has been improved over time. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.0

cassepipe 4y ago

It gets much better when you disable search suggestions then you only have results from your browsing history/bookmarks. And in the end if you get no results you just launch a search anyways. There was a way to configure the relative weight of boomarks/history but I can't find it anymore. Also worthy of notice, if you start with * in the search bar you only get bookmarks results and with ^ you get history results. Finally % is for tabs (on synced devices too) !

clairity 4y ago
that's what i do too, disable suggestions so everything i type doesn't get sent to $searchEngine. i also make use of a few keywords for my most frequently visited sites (like 'hn' for hacker news) so that my keywords always override firefox's dynamic suggestions in case of any conflicts. i just learned about the ^ % * prefixes a few months ago, and now use them all the time.
n8henrie 4y ago
Using % to deal with the shameful number of tabs I have open is a killer feature.

black_puppydog 4y ago

This. Ever since version 2 or so, the Firefox autocompletion has made me never use bookmarks. It's simply that good. As others have said, it requires some tweaking nowadays. If anyone at mozilla is reading... why?! I mean, I get it, newbies... but... why?! Anyhow, bookmarks and keeping them, clicking through endless expanding nested menus of them, just the very concept... very much something for the hostages of a corporation that wants every contact with the web to start (and end) with a visit to google.com

jrochkind1 4y ago

> I can type just a snippet of a URL or a web page title and it'll instantly show me all matching URLs I've visited I think Chrome does this too, no? Maybe Firefox does it better?

Arnavion 4y ago

Amazing. That is the one feature of Firefox I hate so much I had to write an extension that uses a regex-based whitelist to allow entries in my browser history. Otherwise my history, and thus autocomplete suggestions, is full of URls from single-page applications (webmail etc) that differ only in the 1000-character-long hashes in the URL. Whatever logic Chromium does to filter out this chaff from autocomplete works much better for me.