Crowley Code! 
 (Take 12)

Firefox 3 — more better 2008/02/25

  1. Go to about:config.
  2. Set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to true.
  3. Profit!

This will cause Firefox to almost revert its address-bar behavior to the familiar Firefox 2 style where it matches the beginning of URLs instead of attempting some hairbrained search. If I'd wanted to search, I would have hit Apple+K.

Comments (9)

  1. Awesome, this was one of my biggest complaints with FF3. Thanks!

    — Nick — 2008/02/26 8:50 am

  2. Thank you! I just got it around it (mostly) but favoriting things which just wasn't the way I worked. But I figured it was OK since the del.icio.us plugin wasn't out for FF3 yet.

    — Tim Trueman — 2008/02/26 9:54 am

  3. Is this another part of your plan to revert Firefox 3 back to Firefox 2? ;)

    — Mike Malone — 2008/02/26 10:54 am

  4. [...] Firefox 3 — more better — Richard Crowley’s blog Richard hasznalhatova teszi az ff3 “beirojat”. (tags: richardcrowley rcrowley firefox ff2 ff3 usability) [...]

    — links for 2008-02-26@kobak pont org — 2008/02/26 2:21 pm

  5. [...] you’re running Firefox 2 and thinking of switching, do it now…to Firefox 3. Updated: slight fix for location bar behavior courtesy of Richard [...]

    — Tim Trueman » Blog Archive » Kickin’ Ass: Firefox 3 — 2008/03/05 12:10 am

  6. [...] Firefox 3 more better [...]

    — Dr. Robot Nerd School » Blog Archive » Firefox 3 address bar suggest behavior — 2008/04/10 5:46 pm

  7. Personally I like the new searching it does. Should be clarified that it's doing a search of your bookmarks/browsing history. Not searching the internet. It's been useful a few times now when I was trying to remember some page i was at a couple days ago. But on the other hand, hat's off to mozilla for realizing that some people wouldn't like it and make it fairly trivial to change it back, even if the "I'll be careful, I promise" warning can appear to be quite scarry to new people.

    — Todd — 2008/06/20 1:03 pm

  8. I don't understand why anyone would prefer the FF2 search.. the new search is incomparably better. Works perfectly too, I can instantly land on any previously visited site that I would have previously forgotten about or lost forever to the great maze of the interwebs.

    — Daniel — 2008/06/20 10:34 pm

  9. Daniel: Oil and water don't mix. The rampant history searching was getting in the way of my URL typing. Address bars are for addresses, search boxes are for searches. Autocomplete should not muddy the waters.

    — Richard Crowley — 2008/06/21 12:59 am

Richard Crowley?  Kentuckian engineer who cooks and eats in between bicycling and beering.

I blog mostly about programming and databases.  Browse by month or tag.

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