Firefox Will Soon Offer One-Click Buttons For Your Search Engines 101
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today unveiled some of the new search features coming to Firefox. The company says the new additions are "coming soon to a Firefox near you" but didn't give a more specific timeline. The news comes less than a week after Mozilla struck a deal with Yahoo to replace Google as the default search engine in its browser for U.S. users. At the time, the company said a new search experience was coming in December, so we're betting the search revamp will come with the release of Firefox 34, which is currently in beta. In the future release, when you type a search term into the Firefox search box, you will get a list of reorganized search suggestions from the default search provider. Better yet, a new array of buttons below these suggestions will let you pick which search engine you want to send the query to.
Ah, good, progress. (Score:3, Funny)
I was just saying to myself, damn, it's almost impossible to search the net in Firefox. Without some kind of singular button, I was a ship at sea. This update is a godsend and I now die happy.
Re:Ah, good, progress. (Score:4, Insightful)
A search engine is a web page. Google (without the auto-suggestions) is my home page. The first thing I do after installing a browser is remove the useless "search box", leaving nothing but the actual address bar.
Yup, me too. I go one step farther - I turn off search from the address bar. If there's text in the address bar, and the text isn't a URL, the browser should do nothing. It's called an address bar for a reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Sad, but true. Firefox calls the address bar the Awesome bar just so pedants don't confuse it with an address bar. https://support.mozilla.org/en... [mozilla.org]
Re: (Score:2)
A search engine is a web page. Google (without the auto-suggestions) is my home page. The first thing I do after installing a browser is remove the useless "search box", leaving nothing but the actual address bar.
Yup, me too. I go one step farther - I turn off search from the address bar. If there's text in the address bar, and the text isn't a URL, the browser should do nothing. It's called an address bar for a reason.
Interesting. I did something very different, I use the address bar (with the oldbar addon) as an "I'm feeling lucky" search in current tab and the search box as a general search in new tab. I rarely ever use the about:home or search pages.
I have to say though if it was not for the addons & about:config I would have ditched Firefox long ago. Classic Theme Restorer, oldbar, Adblock Plus/Popup/Element Hiding, Quickdrag, Snap links plus, Switch to tab no more - just to get the interface into a useable fo
Re: (Score:2)
With your strong security and privacy concern, you really should not use the address bar for searches.
I am surprised if this has not happened to most people:
You work on something, copying/pasting occasionally.
Then you browse.
You copy/paste a URL into the browser.
Except that the copy didn't take (bad keyboard, bad fingers, bad mojo) and you ended up pasting what was in the buffer from before.
If lucky, you only told the search engine something innocent.
If unlucky, you gave classified company data or highly pr
Re: (Score:2)
I never copy/paste a URL into a browser or anything for that matter. That's what Quickdrag is for - highlight text or click hold a URL, drag/drop it to a white space (ie: 1 or 2 px away from where it is) and it performs the search or opens the link in a new tab. You can also drag drop from other programs for the same effect.
Re: (Score:2)
How is that any different? It still probably uses the copy-paste buffer.
Re: (Score:2)
Drag and drop uses a separate, non-permanent, buffer from C&P, it also shows you graphically what text you're holding so if it's incorrect you can drag it to the taskbar to cancel
Re: (Score:2)
You trust Quickdrag?
Take a look at the comments [mozilla.org]. Just. Do. It.
Contrary to what some think, security isn't something you add on top afterwards - it's something best approached from the other end - don't introduce insecurity.
Also, it does not do much good if the text you wanted to paste comes from a different app.
Re: (Score:2)
I read the comments, seemed questionable to me so I did one better: I read the source code.
The addon's worst feature is that it re-enables marketing 10 days after you turn it off... this is easily defeated by changing the extensions.quickdrag.disableperiod to 2999-01-01 so it never re-enables itself. It's also defeated by adblock.
As to the tracking, I could find no such evidence. The "offending" file is located here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
What it appears to be doing, unless I'm missing somethin
Re: (Score:2)
I would find that very cumbersome, as I use keyword search all the time for a number of websites.
g widget
w petersen graph
m interstellar
y star wars fake trailer
bz invalid vlan with no nics
I wouldn't tolerate having to wade through the front pages of Google, Wikipedia, imdb, YouTube, bugzilla and all the rest every time I wanted to look up something.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny, the presence of that search box is the only reason I still prefer firefox over Chrome or Opera.
Being able to cache a search term in that box and still alter URLs and then go back to my pre-typed search term and mod it and then use it to replace a tab's contents is indispensible.
Re: (Score:2)
for me the search box is essential - sure I can search in the main 'awesome;' bar, but there's a plugin [mozilla.org] that turns your search terms in the search box into clickable 'find in page' buttons so you can find the relevant part of the pages that were returned as results.
Otherwise, I'd get rid of it of course.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be happy if they just stopped breaking all the add-ons with every single release.
I mean why do they even bother with (eg.) "appearance" plugins if they break them every week and you have to go back to the default.
They should just remove support for them and be done with it. Save everybody's time.
Re: (Score:2)
PS: Yes, I know there's plugins which disable version-checking of the other plugins but quite often the real plugins are truly broken and don't work.
Uh, there's an extension for that (Score:2)
It's called QuickSearchBar, and it rocks! And since we're on the same subject, "Add to Search Bar" is handy too!
Re: (Score:2)
No, you're both wrong.
Just set up Quick Searches, a feature available in Firefox since, I think, version 2, and then search from virtually any site you want to direct from the address bar. It only takes a couple minutes to set up each search template, and it doesn't require you to wait for a company/developer to "support" the site you want to search through.
You can even (by parsing the URL when you first set it up) add default stipulations to a search. For example I type "g foo" in the address bar and I get
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some more URLs I have in my collection (haven't checked some of these in awhile, though):
UPS tracking [ups.com] (after trigger enter your tracking number)
US Postal Service Tracking [usps.com] (after trigger enter your tracking number)
YouTube Video Search [youtube.com]
E.gg Timer [ggtimer.com] (type the length of the countdown in plain text after your trigger -- eg: "5 minutes" to make the timer run for five minutes, "2 hours 3 minutes" for two hours and three minutes, ect. You can even go do other browsing and background the tab, it will jump to the front
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get the big hullabaloo about who's "sponsoring" it. Is this all just about which search engine is selected by default when you install the browser? Within the first 5 minutes of using the browser I've probably changed it to Wikipedia anyway.
Although I suppose there will always be those users who never figure out the little triangle on the right side of the button means you can change it.
Re: (Score:2)
What's next for Firefox? (Score:1)
Are they going to announce a search partnership with early 90's search engine, WebCrawler and social networking site MySpace? Will it allow them to explore new realms of synergistic management and development?
I get that new features can make a better user experience, but what is the point of this. Users can already pick what search engine they want and there are so many, many plug-ins to customize search already.
Re: (Score:2)
And instead of an AC I was expecting a 4 digit UID :)
Already have this in my Firefox (Score:3)
I use google, and for some reason, i can type something into the search box, I'll get auto-suggestions and one click action.
Yes, I already have 1 click search action in the current build of firefox without doing anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, great. (Score:2)
More fucking popup menus.
So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
FF finally managed to totally jump the shark when they introduced the Australis interface. Since then I've used Pale Moon - same code base, same plugins, without all the nonsense. If all this ugly bling ensures their survival, (and their deal with Yahoo certainly counts as 'ugly bling'), then more power to them - but as long as Pale Moon keeps going strong, it really doesn't matter to me any more.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe if they'd actually take our suggestions or our code. But no.
Makes it kind of hard to contribute anything back to them.
Re: (Score:2)
or patches by people who just want an old feature back and think Mozilla should listen to them because... just because.
Just because newer doesn't always mean better - that's why. Too bad Mozilla doesn't understand this.
("Awesome" Bar my ass, but I digress.)
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla don't seem to want to fix all of the bugs in Firefox, they'd rather mess about changing the interface constantly. Firefox now freeze-crashes regularly or gets stuck in a loop for 10 seconds, it's Netscape 4.7x all over again.
Time for a re-write?
Firefox have a revenue of hundreds of millions and a falling market share, they should advertise, their competitors do.
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us do this thing known as "work" with our browsers. Making radical changes in my UI with neither prior warning nor a built-in way to revert to the previous layout is not something which I find to be particularly workflow-friendly.
There. Managed to say it without foaming at the mouth, this time. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
You've evidently got me mixed up with someone else who said things that I did not. Thanks for playing, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention ranting about how terrible Firefox is specifically, when Pale Moon is the same browser as the ESR version, just built for 64 bits and with the old UI?
You say there's nothing wrong with Firefox except the UI, then complain that it doesn't make sense people are using a fork that keeps all the features but unfucks the UI?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm all for somebody forking Firefox circa 3.6 and just backporting security fixes to it, but I suppose Pale Moon is as close as we'll get, which is fine.
You say a lot of things that sound like you're using them as insults, but I wouldn't really consider them so. That Mozilla has moved on from a good place in their development and now their new crazy schenanigans are no longer compatible with said "good place" is not really a criticism of a fork from that spot.
Heck, Moon Child has been breaking addon compatibility already, because the old UI code isn't compatible with updated addons.
This seems like rather a contortion to place th
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares? After all, they changed the UI a couple of times, and that's bad. Clearly nothing good has happened.
So how much pain is all the latest features worth?
Relatedly, name some features Mozilla has added since 3.5 that I actually wanted.
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't want hardware acceleration, a multi-threaded browser and UI, numerous security fixes, much of the horrible memory leaks of that era fixed
Hardware acceleration, security fixes, and (maybe) the leaks are rather user-opaque improvements, though. And to my knowledge the only "multi-threading" Firefox does is splitting out one process for plugins so far. I wouldn't say Firefox seems noticeably faster than the 3 era, but maybe that's just my ISP being shitty.
and all manners of HTML5 features that people have quickly become hooked on
I don't really understand why the mass migration from Java and Flash to HTML5 either, as I'm not much informed on the topic. And they're talking about DRM-ifying HTML5 as well, so it hardly so
Re: (Score:2)
RESOLVED WONTFIX
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
That may change as it gains in popularity. Sounds like two major groups went to Pale Moon from Firefox.. those that detest the UI changes Mozilla keeps inflicting on its users and those that don't agree with Mozilla's stance on social justice. They're not necessarily separate factions either, I'm sure there's overlap.
Browsers don't need to do much. They render pages. They execute scripts. I can't for the life of me understand why there are so many updates to it. Many of them seem like steps backwards, such as screwing with a UI that everyone is familiar with.
Pale Moon might not be the long term, maybe, maybe not, but there's a vacuum looking for a long term option. MSIE isn't it. Chrome isn't it. Firefox isn't it. Which browser can appeal to the masses and stay true to its purpose?
Re: (Score:2)
stupid right away (Score:3)
unless I use a screen-keyboard, I need to change my hands from the keyboard to the mouse and back again for this "one-click-experience". Thats stupid. My setup has "one keypress search" (ok actually two if you count whitespace), which is far more better. I use an already existing feature [superuser.com]. My most important search sites get such shortcuts. My current prefixes are:
w : en.wikipedia.org
s: en.wiktionary.org
d: duckduckgo.com
a: web.archive.org (link down? just paste URL, pos1 and a + space)
g: google.com
y: youtube.com
Best thing is, it isn't cluttered up with all that ebay or other sites. Disadvantage of course is that I have to set it up on each computer I use firefox on.
Re: (Score:2)
You've pretty much just manually replicated the bang feature of duckduckgo.
default search duckduckgo
g! google
gi! google images
w! wikipedia
d! free dictionary
yt! youtube
iarchive! archive.org
not quite as brief as your system; but you don't need to reset it up and there's thousands of them
https://duckduckgo.com/bang.ht... [duckduckgo.com]
Re: (Score:3)
I was using the keyword feature 10 years ago, now I don't (esp. since the search box's engine choice was merged with the default search in URL bar) and I don't rely too much on the features of a customized firefox profile.
The keyword feature is very old, even available in the former "Mozilla" browser.
Re: (Score:2)
This however is a feature of the duckduckgo search engine. So its not browser dependent. Not a firefox feature. And doesn't require any customization at your end to use.
The fact that its just *there* is what makes it interesting and useful -- I don't have to do anything to use it.
Re: (Score:2)
iarchive! archive.org
First I've thought this would be a portugese exclamation mark then I realized it got displayed the right way, so its most likely no unicode.
One click? How about zero clicks! (Score:2)
Ctrl+K to get to the searchbar
Ctrl+Up/Ctrl+Down to select the search site
Type
Enter
Admittedly I had a hard time finding out that Ctrl+Up/Down would change the search.
Poor yahoo (Score:4, Funny)
Spending all that money just so people can change the default engine back to google.
Re: (Score:2)
I actually wonder if Yahoo were aware of this intended change. If not then I would expect them to back out of the deal or someone at Yahoo needs a major biatch slapping for such an idiotic sponsorship decision.
Huh (Score:1)
Why does Yahoo still exist?
Re: (Score:2)
I bet it has something to do with the $5 billion they pull in every year in revenue.
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty obvious why Yahoo still exists, to pay more than Google for default search engine status on Firefox ;). Also they are one of the last major portals to offer a properly customisable 'my'portal interface, now that myAOL and myMSN are now dead and myGoogle never really existed. If there are any other major properly customisable 'my'portal web sites out there, provide some links.
One click search doesn't really work, mainly because for best search results specialised search engines are preferable, http [mycroftproject.com]
Inconsistent (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, how the heck are they going to make it one click if everything must get rammed into the Hamburger of Awesome Apple/Chrome Imitation?
Privacy issue. (Score:2)
So, I'm going to search for something in Wikipedia (or any other installed search engine) and Yahoo does the autocomplete for it - that's a privacy invasion.
It all about marketing Yahoo (Score:2)
The question is (Score:2)
Can I turn this feature off? I absolutely hate it when applications try to second guess me, especially when it disrupts what I am in the middle of doing. Right at the top of my feature hate list are:
1) Autocomplete, because the suggestions that come up are generally not what I wan't any way, and they can easily become distractions that lead your thought processes astray.
2) Spellchecking as you type, because a) it doesn't prevent the stupid 'there/their' type errors, and b) minor spelling mistakes don't actu
How about unfucking the awesome bar (Score:2)
The awesome bar used to be awesome. But somewhere along the line it got changed to just search whatever search engine you have selected in the search engine box. Useless. You have to make search keywords and type them if you want to search specific sites. I just want it to always search google when it doesn't have a match.
I imagine there's a config setting for this but I haven't figured it out yet