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Comment by zppx | Hacker News Reader

Everyone that I know are using Chrome right now, except guys like me that like to tweak their browsers (something that Chrome fails miserably) and some extensions that sadly does not fit well into Chrome architecture. The other major problem (a search bar) was partly solved by Duck Duck Go.

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Why do you need a search bar in Chrome? Just type what you want into the "address" bar, and it will search your default search engine.

Also, you can easily add custom keyword searches under Preferences. For example:

Name: Youtube Keyword: y URL: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s

Then just type "y civilization v" and shazam, you're on Youtube, looking at a list of trailers and previews for Civilization V.

Firefox has the same feature; I believe it's called "Keyword Search" and can be accessed through Bookmark Manager. I always found Firefox's separate search box redundant for this reason.

>Firefox has the same feature; I believe it's called "Keyword Search" and can be accessed through Bookmark Manager. I always found Firefox's separate search box redundant for this reason.

I actually use both. I've about 20 keywords - I use the search box when I think I'll need to search across multiple engines (though I usually copy paste the words, I guess I use them as a short scratch pad) and use keywords when I expect I won't have to re-enter the search elsewhere.

ctrl+L gets you to the address bar. "?" + your query forces a default search (so you can do ?http://www.cnn.com and it will actually search for cnn.com, not take you to the site). If you add keywords, then you just ctrl+l then type, say "php in_array" and your query gets submitted directly to php.net's search engine (if you've pre-programmed it). This is actually very much like Firefox's implementation.

> ctrl+L gets you to the address bar. "?" + your query forces a default search

And for the keystroke-obsessed, Ctrl+K clears the location bar and puts in the question mark for you. :)

You don't need a search bar in chrome, just type the address of the site you want to search with and hit TAB. Example:

youtu+TAB and then enter your keyword. Works with every site that support opensearch. en.wiki+TAB will search wikipedia etc.

Slight correction: works with sites that support opensearch and that you previously have visited.

thanks, but now I use Duck Duck Go and bangs for the same functionality, and I love it, I also use it as my main search engine

I really hate to not search directly on the service that I need, such as gamefaqs, jstor or arxiv

I wouldn't say Chrome fails miserably at browser tweaking, but maybe I don't do enough tweaking myself. What exactly are you trying to do that Chrome won't let you do?

Google Chrome's extensions are purely based on HTML, CSS and some custom Javascript. That's incredibly limiting, especially when you're talking about UI manipulation. When you're creating Firefox extensions, you're writing the same native language (XUL) that the Firefox developers use to add features to Firefox itself.

Chrome's extensions only have similar capabilities as Mozilla JetPacks have.

But it also makes developing extensions more accessible to more developers.

Things I can't live without:

Link Widgets: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2933/

Basically, it studies the source for links like "next" and "previous," and lets you page forward and backward with alt+pageup/down. Works great on xkcd, New York Times, and many others.

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Noscript/Flashblock: 'nuff said.

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Colorzilla: http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/

Color picker. Combined with Firebug, great for web dev.

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Leet key: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/770/

Okay, this one I could live without, but the ability to rot13/hex/morse/octal/binary encode text at will is nice.

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Facepad: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8442/

I don't really use this one that often, but it's a good example of Firefox's superiority.

I can speak to some of those: