A Mozilla coder gave an explanation for this several months ago:
"In case you wonder, the reason for which Firefox doesn't merge url and search bar is to protect user's privacy. If you prefer a Chrome-style UI, there are a couple of add-ons that provide just that."
It's interesting. The address bar currently doubles as a search input, but doesn't autocomplete. The search bar does autocomplete, but won't take you to an address if you put one in it. (it takes you to a search for the address)
In my opinion, they need to think this through a bit more. Each input bar is crippled in some way (one won't autocomplete, the other won't go to addresses), and it's all driven by wanting to keep incomplete searches private (until Enter gets hit). Do users realize that the search bar in Firefox is not private, whereas the address bar is? I'm betting not. Do users expect them to be? Chrome assumes not.
In my opinion, if the privacy thing is so important, they'd still be better off having just one input with autocomplete off by default, and easily toggled to on. I doubt that users understand the current setup as "address bar is private, search bar is not".
Well, I'm a Firefox user, and I understand the difference, and I use the input fields differently depending on whether I mind particular information leaking to a search company. So, I personally strongly prefer leaving things the way they are.
I'd actually vote for one change, though: I'd prefer the URL field didn't default to falling back to querying a search engine. One of my pet peeves is mistyping a URL and having my input sent by my system to Google. (That's easy enough for me to change, though, and the Firefox developers seem to be concerned enough about privacy and security to leave the ability to change it intact.)
I'm not suggesting no Firefox users understand the difference, just that a lot might not. I'm sure something close to 99% of the Firefox users on HN do understand the difference.
Essentially, I'm suggesting that they either merge the two fields or make them more distinct. At the moment, it doesn't seem accurate for one to be called "address" and the other to be called "search". The actual function is closer to "private" and "not private". Your suggestion is a good one for one of the directions they could go in, because it increases the distinctness of the fields.
I assume the location bar only auto-completes previously visited URLs, while the search bar auto-completes search queries by hitting google with every key you press. So in chrome's unified case, google knows how many times you type http://news.y..*, not just every potential search query you make.
I prefer it this way...The address box works as a search bar but the search is persistent (ie. I can search for something, close the tab and come back later in two key presses)
I also prefer them separate, but rather for ease of navigation. I use the address box as a form of "search my browsing history" to jump to pages that I've visited before, and it's convenient to keep that separate from the search box's own history and automatic suggestions. The fact that Chrome conflates these two concepts is its biggest turn-off to me.
... I never even thought of that. I always start with naive searches and then remember to add "site" refinements later as I mangle the search from the Google page, so I never actually try the "site:" qualifier right in the URL bar. That's a nasty one.
You can also press the down arrow button and press return as usual that gives the option to search even if what you type looks like a url to the browser. Also I just tried it and the default selection for what you quote is search not the url.
Just tried that (Firefox 25 on OSX). It didn't work. Down arrow does nothing, and there are no AwesomeBar matches, so there is no drop-down. Maybe you have some configuration option set?
Nope. When you type anything in the omnibox that chrome thinks is a url, it shows atleast 2 items in the dropdown one is go to url and other a search google for url. I can upload a screenshot when I am back home in a couple of hours.
The address wasn't understood
Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because
the protocol (site) isn't associated with any program.
You might need to install other software to open this
address.
Firefox 21 on Ubuntu was giving me the same thing, I don't think I've tried it on Firefox 25 on my Ubuntu install.
> 1) 1-word searches/domains or searches involving a domain-looking piece of text throw it off.
With DuckDuckGo, it's easy to prepend/append "!ddg" onto the offending text to force a search. I sometimes have to do this for arithmetic operations, the first operand of which the bar interprets as an address. For me, the small amount of extra time this takes is worth it. A unified search/URL bar, particularly with DDG's bang functionality, feels like a command line. And a command line feels like home.
!ddg is quite a few extra keystrokes though. Isn't it easier to just keep a shortcut key bound to that search? For example, I have 'g' bound for Google. The result:
"blah blah" -> Google: blah blah
"blahblah" -> attempts to find a host named blahblah
"g blahblah" -> Google: blahblah
I've recently tried to switch back from chrome to Firefox but the persistent search thing really bugs me, as well as the fact that it doesn't always search when typing into the url bar.
If you want to get back so quickly there are recently closed, bookmarks, history and plenty of other ways. Always persisting the search term I find very visually distracting.
Edit: On the other hand, the current tab behaviour is more of an irritation. Middle clicking the tab closes the tab unless it's the last tab when it does nothing. This is irritating. Dragging a tab doesn't work well when that tab is maximised. In chrome if you have 2 windows both maximised it's easy to drag a tab from one window to the other. In firefox you have to make one window smaller first to do this.
I'm quite excited to find out if this new interface fixes this.
To be specific, starting a search with a % searches only in open tabs. + searches tagged pages, * searches bookmarks, and ^ searches frequently-visited pages that aren't bookmarked.
I created keyword search bookmarks for all my frequently used search engines.
For example, I often look up music releases on musicbrainz:
http://musicbrainz.org/search?query=%s&type=release
I bookmarked this URL and assigned a keyword (You can also right-click input fields and select 'Add a keyword for this search'). Now, everytime I enter "mb-r <name of the release I'm looking up>" into the url bar, it goes straight to musicbrainz and inserts my search string into the %s-placeholder.
It's handy unless you accidentally start searching for anything that could be mistaken for an IP address or domain. Typing in `0x10c` to find the site for the game, or `minimal-library.js`, or whatever, won't take you to a search results page.
Works alright for most things though, and I think it's still better than Google's default to Google approach, which is frustrating when you're working on a locally hosted site and keep getting sent to a search page.
Persistent. You type into the search bar and it stays there until you clear it out. Whereas url bar search you lose it. You have to click on your search engine's search bar on the page.
Well in firefox you can't do searches like cache:news.ycombinator.com or site:news.ycombinator.com (Edit: in the address bar)
I also prefer the way firefox acts with suggestions in the search and address bar being separate, I often find myself messing up where I meant to go because I thought pressing enter would take me to a site but instead goes to a search.
Firefox is easy for me because the address bar acts differently.
I think they have some data showing that when they're separate, people search more. Since Mozilla gets almost all of their money from searches, it seems like a good idea to keep it that way.
