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Google out-Appling Apple at the browser

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15 pointsnate13 comments

I'm happy that the two are separate in Safari. The combined address / search bar is one of the things that I really don't like about Chrome, and part of why I don't use it. Searching and typing in an address are distinctly different tasks.

How so? Everytime you type something in a search bar, it goes to a search engine's page anyway? So it's just shorthand for http://google.com?q=etcetc

I also don't use Chrome because of the combined elements. I think they serve different purposes and combining them is confusing (at least to somebody used to having them as separate features). I also use the search bar as a kind of clipboard, as I'm sure many other people do as well.

Agreed. My ISP (Suddenlink) does one worse and automatically redirects not-found domains to some search results page of theirs.

The main problem for me is that I often see my typos about a fraction of a second after I hit Return. I know it's wrong and I just want to go fix it. But when something initiates a search, it completely changes the URL (no longer a simple fix) and the resulting page isn't even close to what I wanted. It all just slows me down.

That behavior is egregious. FWIW, you can probably fix it from your end by using a different public DNS server.

True; I switched to Google's DNS a few weeks ago. (Is there an even better one?)

Until that point I was forcing my browser to filter out most of the ISP's page, because it was naturally filled with unnecessary images and ads and crap and was just slow.

I don't agree with it. Chrome is awesome, granted, but it's tightly designed for making Google more money. Not that it's something wrong with it, but it's not useful from my perspective (that might or might not be correct).

Let me explain you. When you type something in Chrome's search bar, you are searching. Firefox, having two bars lets you do different things. On the right one, you search. On the address bar, it lets you find. When I know I want to go to a wikipedia entry for, say, webkit, I don't have to look at the results. Go ahead, type "wiki webkit" on your Firefox's address bar* and you won't have to go through Google as it has the "I'm feeling lucky" behavior.

You can't do that on Chrome. I think that's the reason both Firefox and Safari are sticking with two bars.

*Note: It might or might not work. Each time I install Firefox I have to set the keyword.URL setting to "http://www.google.com/search?btnI=&q= because it stopped working, but that was the old behavior.

Even better than the I'm feeling lucky, one of my favorite features of the firefox address bar is that you can customize the address "X Y" to go to bookmark X, with the value of Y in the url.

For example, firefox used to come with a bookmark specifically for wikipeida that allowed you to type "wiki X" and it would go directly to en.wikipeida.org/wiki/X. At first I thought thats what you were talking about.

We have a few webapps I use to manage stuff, and its just ridiculously faster for me to use them when I can pop "edit 2342252" or "break add" into the address bar.

> It might or might not work.

It doesn't. I have heard of this firefox feature before, but never been able to get it to work successfully. On the other hand, if you just type "webkit" in the address bar of firefox or chrome, the google search results contain a link to the relevant wikipedia page on the first page of results. Given what I have to assume is a vanishingly small proportion of firefox users who are even aware of this feature, I don't think the feature is important enough to justify a design decision this big.

> You can't do that on Chrome

Actually, you can do that on Chrome, and we've supported both it and automatic keyword generation since the beginning. I can type w<tab>webkit and get a Wikipedia search without looking.

http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-make-Chrome-search-Wikipedia-...

As for why Chrome has so many installs, certainly part of the answer is marketing. Google has been cross-promoting it from many Google properties.

I'm pretty sure iOS used to have a single search/URL input, but they separated them out in later releases.

Early versions of Mobile Safari only showed the address bar. When you tapped to focus, you got both an address and search bar.

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