In Firefox,

(1) View >> Toolbars >> Customize

(2) Drag your search box out of the bar

(3) Okay

(4) Go to any search engine. For example, go to google.

(5) Right-click in the search box, and choose "Add Keyword for this search"

(6) Give it a friendly name. For a google search keyword, I might suggest "g".

Now, when you want to search in Firefox's single URL bar, you can type "g cute cat pictures". Add the "cpan" search keyword for the search.cpan.org box, and in the same bar, you can type "cpan Moose". Want to define a word? Set up a keyword for the box at dictionary.com (Would "d" work for you?).

Also, Firefox has NoScript and supports the latest version of JavaScript (Chrome is years behind).