As you know, I’ve been experimenting with the new Firefox. It’s quick, it washer whiter than white, and … it can be improved with a few tweaks.
Tweak one: search from address bar
Firefox 4 omits a feature I love: Browse By Name. That link explains it all, but I’ll recap it here.
In Firefox, you can type anything as the name of the website. Go ahead, try it! Open a new tab, and type “Hugo Jonker“. No “http://”, no “www”, no “.com”. Just a few words. What Firefox used to do, was to ask Google. If Google was sure what to answer, you were immediately redirected. If Google wasn’t so sure, you’d get a Google search for what you just typed.(*)
I was so impressed when I saw this. This was damned awesome! “Google knows” made reality — Google does know! Imagine my disappointment upon finding out that Firefox 4 broke this. It now always gives you a Google result page(*). Not cool.
Luckily, this is easily enough fixed — see the above link. Quick recap:
- Surf to about:config
- find “keyword.URL”
- Give it the value “http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=”
Tadaa, your Firefox works again — without needingĂ‚Â Yet Another Plugin.
* Unless your internet provider is a dick that redirects all unresolved traffic to their own pages.
PS: Obviously, you can use other web services (Google search, Bing search, Yahoo, etc.– just search for “address bar search firefox” in your favourite search engine). But I love this “redirect-if-sure-otherwise-search” option, and I wanted it back. So now I do :)
Tweak two: animated tabs
Opening/closing tabs in firefox 4 is soooooooooooo cool! Your tabs slide into existence, and wink out again as the others slide over them.
Well, you know what? I’m typing this on a netbook, and this stuff hurts. Eyecandy is fine — if I don’t notice any downsides. Here, I do.
So: goodbye, animated tabs!
Short short version: about:config, browsers.tabs.animate = false. And surfing is good again :)