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Good thing that's an option that is trivial to enable under Preferences -> Search -> Search Bar. I suspect most users who are technical enough to appreciate the

Good thing that's an option that is trivial to enable under Preferences -> Search -> Search Bar. I suspect most users who are technical enough to appreciate the significance of going to http://ai http://ai are able to figure that one out easily enough.

jagged-chisel 4y ago
Being technical enough, I’d type http://ai http://ai and wouldn’t for a second have thought that some time in the past, someone working on Firefox thought “hey, we could offer a second text box for searching” even though the idea Makes Sense because so much that Makes Sense has been argued against by the leaders of various projects and I’m callused against trying to understand the motivation behind changes to things that already worked before they were removed or hidden…
josefx 4y ago
trivial to enable but badly maintained. When I enabled that originally it broke the search bar on the default new tab page. The default behavior is also nonsensical if you want to access anything on the local network by name.
- not_kurt_godel 4y ago
  I have been using the separate search bar for, idk, 10(?) years and I have never encountered a single bug with it (including the one you describe). Maybe you should give it another chance and chalk that up to an issue with the initial rollout, which is a standard thing to happen on virtually every software release. > The default behavior is also nonsensical if you want to access anything on the local network by name. Ok, and what percent of users do you think that affects? And what percent of those aren't technically savvy enough to enable the separate search bar? And what percent of those who aren't under a company managed policy that enables the separate search bar automatically? Let's make some reasonable estimates about those numbers and then reevaluate how "nonsensical" this core feature of Firefox is.
  - josefx 4y ago
    > Ok, and what percent of users do you think that affects? And that right here is the same argument you can make for showing the hand full of remaining Firefox users a "this site requires a modern browser, download chrome here" message. After all the amount of users affected by that is a fucking rounding error.
    - not_kurt_godel 4y ago
      That is not remotely the same argument. Designing efficient UX != ensuring open standards on the Web
climb_stealth 4y ago
My cynical take is that the majority of people don't change default settings. So it is only a matter of time before the setting gets obsoleted because no one uses it. And yes, I do have the two bars separated. The address bar is for finding things locally that I know I have like bookmarks. The search bar is for finding things on the internet. It really bugs me that those two very different concepts get merged and conflated in modern browsers.

jagged-chisel 4y ago

Being technical enough, I’d type http://ai http://ai and wouldn’t for a second have thought that some time in the past, someone working on Firefox thought “hey, we could offer a second text box for searching” even though the idea Makes Sense because so much that Makes Sense has been argued against by the leaders of various projects and I’m callused against trying to understand the motivation behind changes to things that already worked before they were removed or hidden…

josefx 4y ago

trivial to enable but badly maintained. When I enabled that originally it broke the search bar on the default new tab page. The default behavior is also nonsensical if you want to access anything on the local network by name.

not_kurt_godel 4y ago
I have been using the separate search bar for, idk, 10(?) years and I have never encountered a single bug with it (including the one you describe). Maybe you should give it another chance and chalk that up to an issue with the initial rollout, which is a standard thing to happen on virtually every software release. > The default behavior is also nonsensical if you want to access anything on the local network by name. Ok, and what percent of users do you think that affects? And what percent of those aren't technically savvy enough to enable the separate search bar? And what percent of those who aren't under a company managed policy that enables the separate search bar automatically? Let's make some reasonable estimates about those numbers and then reevaluate how "nonsensical" this core feature of Firefox is.
- josefx 4y ago
  > Ok, and what percent of users do you think that affects? And that right here is the same argument you can make for showing the hand full of remaining Firefox users a "this site requires a modern browser, download chrome here" message. After all the amount of users affected by that is a fucking rounding error.
  - not_kurt_godel 4y ago
    That is not remotely the same argument. Designing efficient UX != ensuring open standards on the Web

climb_stealth 4y ago

My cynical take is that the majority of people don't change default settings. So it is only a matter of time before the setting gets obsoleted because no one uses it. And yes, I do have the two bars separated. The address bar is for finding things locally that I know I have like bookmarks. The search bar is for finding things on the internet. It really bugs me that those two very different concepts get merged and conflated in modern browsers.