I posted a comment about this yesterday, but I think this is a very cool and useful thing you can do in Firefox to make searching a much more pleasant experience so I wanted to share the blog post I wrote a while ago.
TL;DR: If you want to search a website directly, you can save a bookmark with a %s in it, and then add a "keyword" for the bookmark, and then search by typing keyword search term in the url bar, it will autocomplete as a search for your string
I used vimium for several years, but eventually I had to concede that it was irritating more often than it was helpful and I disabled it. I still miss typing qq to close all tabs to the right though
In practice I use duckduckgo bang command with the same effect (!w Beethoven for Wikipedia, !gh angular for Github, etc) but of course this is useful if you have a local and/or private website to search.
UI-wise I lament that everything is shoved into a unique bar. I stubbornly refuse to fuse them because in my mind location bar == past and present (where I am, where I was) while search bar is where I want to go.
Two eternities ago there was quite some activity around the idea of CLI-ing the Web browser. Anyone remember Firefox Ubiquity? It was kind of Quicksilver (the OSX launcher) but for the Web. Maybe with the current AI frenzy the idea of having small tools that you can call will come back.
UI-wise I lament that everything is shoved into a unique bar. I stubbornly refuse to fuse them because in my mind location bar == past and present (where I am, where I was) while search bar is where I want to go.
Doesn't it make sense to input where you'd like to be into your present location bar when you want to be elsewhere?
Yes, but I didn't said it made sense for other people ! On a more practical sense I like the suggestion on the location bar to be only history while the one in the seach bar to be autocomplete.
My tangential hot tip is to disable history and suggestion entries in the address bar, leaving only bookmarks (including keyword bookmarks).
I still retain a browsing history which can be searched separately if the need arises, but for most day-to-day tasks it's enough that I can quickly access my slowly expanding set of bookmarks.
This one doesn't seem bad but personally I would be a lot happier with browsers if they left adress bar as address bar and left search to the already present dedicated box. Or at least exposed that setting instead of requiring workarounds for such a fundamental feature.
I consider omnibox one of most irritating small/infrequent annoyances in my life.
[OP] RheingoldRiver | 21 days ago
I posted a comment about this yesterday, but I think this is a very cool and useful thing you can do in Firefox to make searching a much more pleasant experience so I wanted to share the blog post I wrote a while ago.
TL;DR: If you want to search a website directly, you can save a bookmark with a
%sin it, and then add a "keyword" for the bookmark, and then search by typingkeyword search termin the url bar, it will autocomplete as a search for your stringOdpop | 20 days ago
For common websites, I use Vimium. If you press B you can search your bookmarks and pressing enter opens the link in a new tab
[OP] RheingoldRiver | 20 days ago
I used vimium for several years, but eventually I had to concede that it was irritating more often than it was helpful and I disabled it. I still miss typing
qqto close all tabs to the right thoughPetitPrince | 20 days ago
In practice I use duckduckgo bang command with the same effect (
!w Beethovenfor Wikipedia,!gh angularfor Github, etc) but of course this is useful if you have a local and/or private website to search.UI-wise I lament that everything is shoved into a unique bar. I stubbornly refuse to fuse them because in my mind location bar == past and present (where I am, where I was) while search bar is where I want to go.
Two eternities ago there was quite some activity around the idea of CLI-ing the Web browser. Anyone remember Firefox Ubiquity? It was kind of Quicksilver (the OSX launcher) but for the Web. Maybe with the current AI frenzy the idea of having small tools that you can call will come back.
Pepetto | 20 days ago
Doesn't it make sense to input where you'd like to be into your present location bar when you want to be elsewhere?
PetitPrince | 20 days ago
Yes, but I didn't said it made sense for other people ! On a more practical sense I like the suggestion on the location bar to be only history while the one in the seach bar to be autocomplete.
babypuncher | 20 days ago
I've been doing this for 20 years in Firefox at this point and still get excited when other people discover it.
text_garden | 20 days ago
My tangential hot tip is to disable history and suggestion entries in the address bar, leaving only bookmarks (including keyword bookmarks).
I still retain a browsing history which can be searched separately if the need arises, but for most day-to-day tasks it's enough that I can quickly access my slowly expanding set of bookmarks.
Tiraon | 20 days ago
This one doesn't seem bad but personally I would be a lot happier with browsers if they left adress bar as address bar and left search to the already present dedicated box. Or at least exposed that setting instead of requiring workarounds for such a fundamental feature.
I consider omnibox one of most irritating small/infrequent annoyances in my life.