Firefox Will Soon Offer One-Click Buttons For Your Search Engines

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.

Comments

Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a search box?

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[jenningsthecat]

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:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell would anyone want to use this worthless new "feature" when you can use keyword searching. For example I can type the following directly into my address bar:

g flying cars (will search for "flying cars" in Google)
w optimus prime (will search for "optimus prime" in Wikipedia)
d nostomania (will search for "nostomania" in Dictionary.com)
mg deus ex (will search for "deus ex" in MobyGames)
amz usb flash drive (will search for "usb flash drive" in Amazon)
gsma lumia 1520 (will search for "lumia 1520" in GSMArena)

And so on. I can add whatever search I want and assign any keyword I want. I mean come on, I've been searching like this for years. Opera was the first browser to have this feature of course, but now all of the major browsers support it. This button clicking crap seems like a step backwards.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

But now with the added functionality your keystrokes can be captured as well, that way the search engine can determine who you are so they can keep you in your filter bubble.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[praxis]

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...

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about? Wherever I search would have that information anyway.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[JMJimmy]

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 form. 6 different addons for security/privacy fixes and a good 40+ about:config changes to keep Mozilla's data collection from reporting various details about me.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Elbart]

There's a reason why the oh so open-minded Mozilla is using the tightly locked-down OSX for pretty much all their promotion-images.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[skids]

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:Ah, good, progress.

[Joce640k]

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:Ah, good, progress.

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

I turn off search from the address bar and leave the search bar and add startpage and wikipedia as a search engines

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[arth1]

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 private information.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[gbjbaanb]

for me the search box is essential - sure I can search in the main 'awesome;' bar, but there's a plugin 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:Ah, good, progress.

[JMJimmy]

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:Ah, good, progress.

[TangoMargarine]

How is that any different? It still probably uses the copy-paste buffer.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[JMJimmy]

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:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is considered too complicated for most people I guess. Would be nice to have support (via a standard) somewhere down the line where I just give the parent URL and the string I want to associate it with when searching instead of learning how each website formats their search queries.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right click the search box on any page, click "add as search engine" and set your keyword. Real difficult...

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

We should have seen this coming. When Opera ditched Presto, it should have been obvious who the big loser was going to be. Now that Opera is a reskinned Chrome, the Firefox people have no source of ideas.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google (without the auto-suggestions) is my home page.

In other words, you are dumb.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[arth1]

You trust Quickdrag?
Take a look at the comments. 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:Ah, good, progress.

[JMJimmy]

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-...

What it appears to be doing, unless I'm missing something, is creating an iframe that allows it to track ads displayed therein. It also only does so on yahoo.com and youtube.com so there's no "tracking" of your browsing. Even with this, the simple date change above will permanently disable the marketing so the iframe is never created.

Re:Ah, good, progress.

[Trogre]

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.

Uh, there's an extension for that

[ADRA]

It's called QuickSearchBar, and it rocks! And since we're on the same subject, "Add to Search Bar" is handy too!

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use an extension, when there's an even better solution built-in already: bookmarks toolbar.

[search engine] [news folder] [weather folder] ...

The folders turn into drop down lists when you click them.

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda reminds me of DuckDuckGo's bangs - https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
I just add a few characters to any query to direct which search engine to use.
!/. for slashdot, !g for google, !gi for images !gm for maps, !e for ebay, !a for amazon, !r for reddit, !y for yahoo, and then another thousand I almost never use.

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[SeaFox]

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 a Google search for foo but with -buy -shop and a couple other terms added on... which is very effective at filtering irrelevant advertising/e-commerce links out of my results. It makes my search results not quite as useful as the old original Google when they were getting off the ground, but certainly better than the SEO-shat on info I get from many search engines now.

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[John Bokma]

Oblig link: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/k...

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[John Bokma]

Oblig link: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/q... You can use it also for RSS feeds: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/r...

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[Anonymous Coward]

GP AC. Hell no. I disabled the "quick search" feature immediately the first time I encountered it. That's worse than DNS hijacking by my ISP (also disabled). The quick search feature needs to go die in a fire already.

If I want to search, I middle-click the search engine button. Alternately, sometimes I just type the first letter of my search engine into the address bar and hit enter.

p.s. I will never type anything into the stupid sponsored search engine box to the right of the task bar. I'm glad they finally let you customize it away. :)

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[SeaFox]

Some more URLs I have in my collection (haven't checked some of these in awhile, though):

UPS tracking (after trigger enter your tracking number)
US Postal Service Tracking (after trigger enter your tracking number)
YouTube Video Search
E.gg Timer (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 when it goes off.
IMDB Search
Rotten Tomatoes
Google Translate (to English) -- just paste the URL of the foreign site after your trigger.
ZXing QR Code decoder -- paste a image URL after the trigger.
DownForEveryoneOrJustMe website check
NewEgg Product Search
FreshPorts Search

For sites without their own searches, you can always set up a Google search restricted to the site with "site%3Adomainofsite.tld+%s" as the string.

Once you have all the major search engines set up there's really no reason to waste toolbar space on Firefox with the actual Search Bar anymore.

Re:Uh, there's an extension for that

[TangoMargarine]

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.

Pffft...

[Anonymous Coward]

I made a maxthon plugin over 10 years ago that did that. Moved on to a real OS, Linux, and a real browser, Chromium.

Re: Pffft...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know that browser, "Chromium". Who produces it?

What's next for Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

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:What's next for Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

To indentify you by your keypress cadence.

Re:What's next for Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is a "search engine" and where is the support for Gopher? And dang it, I can't for the life of me get this stupid "browser" to dial my favorite BBSs!

Re:What's next for Firefox?

[Pikoro]

And instead of an AC I was expecting a 4 digit UID :)

Already have this in my Firefox

[Nyder]

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:Already have this in my Firefox

[Luthair]

I believe the point is that the drop down menu includes all the search providers. Personally I would like this, seems like I always have Wikipedia selected when I want Google and Google selected when I want Wikipedia.

Oh, great.

[PvtVoid]

More fucking popup menus.

So what?

[jenningsthecat]

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:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this attitude is that it doesn't contribute anything back to them. So if they do die, you will have only caused it to happen faster. And with them will go Pale Moon and all the other knock-offs that couldn't survive without Mozilla doing the hard work. That's why it's important to still donate back to Mozilla, even if you feel the need to keep insisting with every breath that they've "jumped the shark".

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pale Moon will keep going strong as long as Firefox keeps going strong. It's a complete derivative of Firefox backed by one developer. Eventually Pale Moon won't be able to keep up.

Don't get me wrong, I hate all the modern browsers. But Pale Moon isn't a long term solution.

Re:So what?

[Dagger2]

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:So what?

[MrL0G1C]

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:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this attitude is that it doesn't contribute anything back to them. So if they do die, you will have only caused it to happen faster. And with them will go Pale Moon and all the other knock-offs that couldn't survive without Mozilla doing the hard work. That's why it's important to still donate back to Mozilla, even if you feel the need to keep insisting with every breath that they've "jumped the shark".

I'd say Mozilla lost the plot - taken a popular web browser and insisted on making changes that totally alienated the user base. The only way forward for the browser is if Mozilla Foundation dies and some other organisation takes over. Makes more sense to donate to one of offshoots like Palemoon.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. It's sad that Mozilla has more money than Opera Software and yet their browser is complete ass compared to Opera, both old and new versions.

Re:So what?

[OhPlz]

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:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad everyone on Slashdot is just nerdy enough to know about Netscape 4, but not nerdy enough to actually look at Mozilla's bug tracker to see all the stuff they're legitimately fixing and modernizing in Firefox, or even to look at an old version of Firefox to see how far it's come. Who cares? After all, they changed the UI a couple of times, and that's bad. Clearly nothing good has happened. I mean, why support them while they're bringing Firefox up to code? Let's just be purely negative! And while we're at it, let's pretend they have the budget to compete on advertising, and that advertising a product that's still in transition is a wise move? Heck, I'll be generous. Here's another thing to dwell on so you can ignore anything positive that they've done: Brendan Eich. Enjoy!

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly did you suggest that was rejected? Because aside from patches that take too long to review due to the sheer volume of things to review, I've really only seen patches rejected when they are bringing in complex security-affecting features that Mozilla doesn't have time to later maintain themselves (like WebP), or patches by people who just want an old feature back and think Mozilla should listen to them because... just because. In the meantime, there are people contributing and maintaining things like MathML support, Solaris support, MIPS support, and the list goes on. So with all due respect, you're full of it.

Re:So what?

[Zontar The Mindless]

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:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, does that truly warrant going on some fantastical tirade about them not wanting to fix any other bugs, when they clearly do (and are?) 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? And I still don't understand how you think advertising will help if Firefox is really as godawful as you make it sound.

Re:So what?

[fahrbot-bot]

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:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

> [....] I can't for the life of me understand why there are so many updates to it. [.....]

Neither do I. But do you known Firefox have ESR (Extended Support Release) releases? Those releases stay on the same feature set, and receive only fixes. So you can enjoy a stable Firefox for a long while before upgrading to a next ESR release.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/...

Re:So what?

[Zontar The Mindless]

You've evidently got me mixed up with someone else who said things that I did not. Thanks for playing, though.

Re:So what?

[Elbart]

That's why it's important to still donate back to Mozilla

RESOLVED WONTFIX

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and when the australis UI lands in the ESR release, what then...?

Better to support the project that's doing what you want now so that it doesn't wither on the vine rather than to hope another project will backtrack on things they've already said they won't backtrack on.

Re:So what?

[TangoMargarine]

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:So what?

[TangoMargarine]

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:So what?

[HBI]

thank you for the Pale Moon tip. Enjoying it now!

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're dreaming. Those "major groups" that you mention are probably a decimal error in the Firefox browser market share. I think the browsers are getting dumbed down as part of the more general trend of simplifying user interfaces to give a similar experience, no matter if you're accessing a website through a 27 inch screen or on a 4 inch cellphone. I doubt there is enough interest in keeping a more complex browser UI around to convince an organization to develop an UI for that specific market. The plugins that change the appearance of Firefox are here to stay.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when do browsers not need to do much? Are operating systems just there to organize files and help devices talk to one another? Browsers have become no less than full-on GUI toolkits with media playback and fairly advanced scripting capabilities. Should they have? Maybe not. But if you honestly think Moon Child and the less helpful users who jumped ship to Pale Moon will be able to keep up with Google, Apple and Microsoft, when Mozilla can barely do so... well, you're living in a dream world.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? 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, and all manners of HTML5 features that people have quickly become hooked on? There is NOTHING you wanted since 3.5, yet you're still using a newer version? Come on now.

Re:So what?

[TangoMargarine]

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 sounds all good.

There is NOTHING you wanted since 3.5, yet you're still using a newer version? Come on now.

I'm actually using Pale Moon, but whatever. Mostly because I hate Chrome's interface even more (and why I hate that Firefox's is inevitably converging on a Chrome reskin).

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I didn't say that. I'm not the one complaining about the UI, and "all sorts of pauses" and such. And yet people are using an older ESR build of Firefox that calls itself Pale Moon, and think that it will be able to avoid these problems or similar ones. Heck, Moon Child has been breaking addon compatibility already, because the old UI code isn't compatible with updated addons. It'll be fun to see him struggle to figure out how to get Electrolysis working. It's not like you guys are going to help him. You don't even want to install an addon to get your UI to work the way it used to.

Re:So what?

[TangoMargarine]

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 the blame on PM. In fact, Firefox is breaking compatibility with older versions of itself, and PM is just trying to tag along for the ride, while not just being a reskinning, which is of course the problem--if PM was just a reskinning, all the extensions would work. But the interface got so fucked with Australis that the whole point of PM was to point at Australis and say "not that."

And there's always the archives of previous versions of extensions, although a lot of those will presumably stop working as FF and PM diverge, if they involve a server component.

I'm not saying PM is the best way to go about the FF situation, but at a certain point people just started saying, "Fuck it; I'm tired of FF's shit." Which is a bit sad really, as we want to use FF but they keep poking us in the eye.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Point is, Firefox is a joke now and has been for quite some time.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember to donate back to Mozilla, because they're the ones who basically made Pale Moon. If you don't and Mozilla tanks, well there goes your Pale Moon.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I've submitted bug reports to Mozilla before and they always get closed without being fixed. The Mozilla developers are combative and believe they can do no wrong. This is one of the reason I dumped their crap browser long ago.

For those few unfortunate and uninformed people who still actually use Firefux, when Mozilla tanks they can just move on to a better browser.

stupid right away

[NotInHere]

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. 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:stupid right away

[vux984]

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...

Re:stupid right away

[Blaskowicz]

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:stupid right away

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha-haa, now that there is a GUI for this, you can be sure the keyboard shortcut system will be removed "to consolidate the experience", or whatever crappy reason the UX department gets out of their bullshit bingo that time.

Re:stupid right away

[NotInHere]

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.

Re:stupid right away

[vux984]

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:stupid right away

[Anonymous Coward]

See portableapps.com and search for FireFox

Poor yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Spending all that money just so people can change the default engine back to google.

Re:Poor yahoo

[bloodhawk]

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.

Re:Poor yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the first thing to do since I don't use Yahoo is to unstall the tool bar completely. If I can't then I'll have to prevent firefox from updating automatically. THe last resort is to get the netscape browser when things were simpler from the internet archives (I''ll use google to search for that since yahoo may prevent finding its replacement).

Huh

[koan]

Why does Yahoo still exist?

Re:Huh

[afgam28]

I bet it has something to do with the $5 billion they pull in every year in revenue.

Re:Huh

[rtb61]

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/sear... or http://mycroftproject.com/sear... or when you want you privacy back http://mycroftproject.com/sear.... As examples, so using the most appropriate search engine for the results you are after takes more than one click.

Re:Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparantly their demographics are in "flyover country" as opposed to the coasts.

Inconsistent

[tompaulco]

First they introduce multiple clicks to get to the menu, now they are introducing single click to search. How inconsistent. Is this the law of conservation of clicks?

Re:Inconsistent

[jopsen]

Slashdot users probably use keyword search anyways... I suspect this is aimed at "normal" people, the kind that clicks on everything.

Re:Inconsistent

[TangoMargarine]

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.

[MrL0G1C]

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

[Stan92057]

It all about marketing yahoo and pushing people to use the default search providers. I mean yahoo is paying them millions of dollars its what Yahoo wants not really what FF wants. maybe the numbers are very different then what we think they are. Meaning people who actually use the default search and search bar/box whatever ya want to call it

The question is

[jandersen]

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 actually matter that much in an age where people tend to write SMS style lingo.

3) Search-as-you-type, because I actually hardly ever want simple, linear, single-term search functionality, and it only adds noise and distraction and costs performance. I want to be able to type in my search terms, revise them and then send off the query.

More and more impressive features

[Anonymous Coward]

coming from the evelyn avenue. not.

How about unfucking the awesome bar

[drinkypoo]

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

Re:How about unfucking the awesome bar

[Anonymous Coward]

Just select Google, set a keyword for every other search engines (or bookmarks or bookmarklets) you mean to use, hide the search bar, profit. Works for me.

Think a little further?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to toot my own horn, but is that the only way people search?
I had to write the one below because the current search bar is woefully inadequate.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-menu-plus-plus/?src=search

One click? How about zero clicks!

[TangoMargarine]

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.