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I was surprised to see praise for Chrome's omnibar here. The meddlesome assumption that everything I type into the URL bar is or should be a Google search driv

by bhauer 13y ago

I was surprised to see praise for Chrome's omnibar here. The meddlesome assumption that everything I type into the URL bar is or should be a Google search drives me crazy when I use Chrome. By comparison, Firefox's URL bar does an incredible job of matching fragments of URLs to my history and bookmarks. My personal project has the word "taskforce" in the domain and title. In Firefox, I can type "task" and it's at the top of the options every single time. One down arrow, enter, and done. Chrome puts it as option five under a search for "task" and three predictive recommendations from Google's search engine that start with "task" (none of which I have ever visited in Chrome). "Taskstream log in"? I don't even know what that means. Essentially everything I want to select in the omnibar is always several items down the list. Very frustrating and inevitably one of the chief reasons I close Chrome and switch back to Firefox.

epmatsw 13y ago
HN is the most obvious example of this for me. It's one of my most visited sites in both browsers. In Firefox, I can type "y" into the url field, and it's the first result. In Chrome, the same "y" lists youtube, y, yahoo, and youtube (again) before HN.
- clicks 13y ago
  Try typing 'n'... seeing as the url of this website is news.ycombinator.com. It doesn't start with y, as youtube or yahoo does.
  - oblio 13y ago
    Well, for me that's a fault. Why should the search have to begin with the starting letter of the site? Or why should that be favored? I'd rather point me to the most likely site containing that letter/group of letter. Oh well, it's probably personal preference :)
stephengillie 13y ago
I haven't had this problem since I turned off predictive search for the omnibar.
decryptthis_NSA 13y ago
I, too, do not like the omnibar and can speculate Google did it to drive traffic to its search engine, not to help you. They judge that this (highly profitable) annoyance is not enough to drive from Google. I wonder if the recommendations are however slightly linked to CPC of the terms, wouldn't surprise me.
mayanksinghal 13y ago
Here are some of my Chrome autocompletes: n (news.ycombinator.com), mu (music.google.com), ma (mail.google.com), a (amazon.com), gi (github.com), q (quora.com), l (localhost), i (images.google.com), c (coursera.com). I don't think I even give it a second thought after pressing these characters. I just do 'n' and Return. Your experience might be worse, probably because you haven't used chrome enough.
- bhauer 13y ago
  To be clear, if I start typing the beginning of the domain name, Chrome will correctly identify my intent. But if I type a fragment of the URL (or multiple fragments), it assumes I want to run a search. In your example, you said "n" leads to news.ycombinator.com. In Firefox, "n" leads to me to news.cnet.com, which I also visit fairly regularly. Meanwhile, "yc", or "hac", or "nator" yield Hacker News. In Chrome, "yc" yields a suggestion of "yc.edu" (whatever that is) and "hac" yields "hacked games." Part of my distaste for this is that it reveals that everything I type into the omnibar is sent to Google for analysis. I have once accidentally pasted a password into the omnibar field and had a sudden panic. I know it's Google, and DBE, and all of that. But still. Back to the fragments point, I might remember a site had something to do with "combi" in the name. Type that into Firefox and it knows what I want, even if I've only visited it once several months ago. Google thinks I want "combivent respimat." No joke. Apparently it's a drug. In fact, as I experiment right now, I can't even get Chrome to suggest news.ycombinator.com by typing "combinator" into the omnibar. As a user of Chrome I am required to remember the domain started with 'y'. In Firefox, the browser tries to help me. As an exercise, can you tell us what sites are suggested when you type "combinator", "host", "hub" (this one is an example of a plausible case--"It was something-hub", type "hub", "oh yeah, github!"), etc?
ajkjk 13y ago
Different strokes, etc? The Chrome omnibar is my favorite navigational tool I've ever used and I wish it was in every program (maybe that's possible already, I don't know actually). It's the main reason I haven't switched to Firefox.

by bhauer 13y ago

epmatsw 13y ago

HN is the most obvious example of this for me. It's one of my most visited sites in both browsers. In Firefox, I can type "y" into the url field, and it's the first result. In Chrome, the same "y" lists youtube, y, yahoo, and youtube (again) before HN.

clicks 13y ago
Try typing 'n'... seeing as the url of this website is news.ycombinator.com. It doesn't start with y, as youtube or yahoo does.
- oblio 13y ago
  Well, for me that's a fault. Why should the search have to begin with the starting letter of the site? Or why should that be favored? I'd rather point me to the most likely site containing that letter/group of letter. Oh well, it's probably personal preference :)

stephengillie 13y ago

I haven't had this problem since I turned off predictive search for the omnibar.

decryptthis_NSA 13y ago

I, too, do not like the omnibar and can speculate Google did it to drive traffic to its search engine, not to help you. They judge that this (highly profitable) annoyance is not enough to drive from Google. I wonder if the recommendations are however slightly linked to CPC of the terms, wouldn't surprise me.

mayanksinghal 13y ago

Here are some of my Chrome autocompletes: n (news.ycombinator.com), mu (music.google.com), ma (mail.google.com), a (amazon.com), gi (github.com), q (quora.com), l (localhost), i (images.google.com), c (coursera.com). I don't think I even give it a second thought after pressing these characters. I just do 'n' and Return. Your experience might be worse, probably because you haven't used chrome enough.

bhauer 13y ago
To be clear, if I start typing the beginning of the domain name, Chrome will correctly identify my intent. But if I type a fragment of the URL (or multiple fragments), it assumes I want to run a search. In your example, you said "n" leads to news.ycombinator.com. In Firefox, "n" leads to me to news.cnet.com, which I also visit fairly regularly. Meanwhile, "yc", or "hac", or "nator" yield Hacker News. In Chrome, "yc" yields a suggestion of "yc.edu" (whatever that is) and "hac" yields "hacked games." Part of my distaste for this is that it reveals that everything I type into the omnibar is sent to Google for analysis. I have once accidentally pasted a password into the omnibar field and had a sudden panic. I know it's Google, and DBE, and all of that. But still. Back to the fragments point, I might remember a site had something to do with "combi" in the name. Type that into Firefox and it knows what I want, even if I've only visited it once several months ago. Google thinks I want "combivent respimat." No joke. Apparently it's a drug. In fact, as I experiment right now, I can't even get Chrome to suggest news.ycombinator.com by typing "combinator" into the omnibar. As a user of Chrome I am required to remember the domain started with 'y'. In Firefox, the browser tries to help me. As an exercise, can you tell us what sites are suggested when you type "combinator", "host", "hub" (this one is an example of a plausible case--"It was something-hub", type "hub", "oh yeah, github!"), etc?

ajkjk 13y ago

Different strokes, etc? The Chrome omnibar is my favorite navigational tool I've ever used and I wish it was in every program (maybe that's possible already, I don't know actually). It's the main reason I haven't switched to Firefox.