Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by MauranKilom on Thursday October 14, 2021 @11:58AM (#28866063)

On the other hand, I despise this exact change in Firefox. When I want to search, I use the search bar. When I want to enter an address, I use the address bar. I have a clear picture of what I want to do, and it is annoying to no end if the browser confuses one for the other. For example, by auto-completing a search term to a URL instead (see: computers don't know what users want). That's why I personally prefer the ability to make that choice explicitly.

I get it, I'm not the kind of user this article is about. And maybe I'm just insufficiently exposed to the other paradigm to have become "fluent" in it. But I just wanted to point out that there definitely are users whose mental model differentiates search terms and URLs.

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by climb_stealth on Thursday October 14, 2021 @09:45PM (#28872997)

Thank you for posting this! I agree.

Address bar: I know what I want and I want it to only search in bookmarks and history.

Search bar: I don't quite know what I want and I want to open an internet search for it. And possibly give suggestions from actual search results.

Separating the address and search bars is the first thing I do when I set up a new Firefox. I hope it will stay around but I'm somewhat bracing myself for it to go away eventually.

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by Adrig on Thursday October 14, 2021 @12:16PM (#28866290)

>For example, by auto-completing a search term to a URL instead

Press space? Not every use case has to be addressed by UI elements, especially when we're talking about edge cases

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by asdff on Thursday October 14, 2021 @01:39PM (#28867421)

Especially considering if it really grinds your gears, you can have your search and address bar be discrete pretty trivially.

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by unethical_ban on Thursday October 14, 2021 @02:22PM (#28867979)

FYI in Firefox you can revert to the correct, two-box implementation by checking "Settings > Search" . You can get two boxes back, and you can turn off search suggestions in the address bar.

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by wrycoder on Thursday October 14, 2021 @02:57PM (#28868444)

Yeah, but I want that horizontal space to the right of the nav field for other things, so I configure to combine nav and search.

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by WorldMaker on Thursday October 14, 2021 @05:23PM (#28870336)

The power user thing in most "omnibars" that's been around for a long time at this point is that if you prefix search queries with a question mark ? you get an explicit search behavior (with your default search provider) and for instance auto-complete doesn't show recent URLs anymore.

Firefox (and Edge; don't know about Chrome as I don't use it) still have the concept of "Search Keywords" that you can prefix searches with to get into search modes for against specific non-default search providers. For instance in the Firefox bar you can type @wikipedia and go directly to a Wikipedia Search mode.

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by forgotpwd16 on Friday October 15, 2021 @05:34AM (#28875911)

In Firefox at least you can focus address bar for search with default engine with Ctrl-K or Ctrl-J.

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Re:Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users by duckmysick on Friday October 15, 2021 @06:29AM (#28876245)

For anyone wondering why there's two shortcuts for the same action:

> If you have enabled Emacs-style text editing shortcuts in GNOME, they will also work in Firefox. When an Emacs text editing shortcut conflicts with the default shortcuts (as occurs with Ctrl+K), the Emacs shortcut will take precedence if focus is inside a text box (which would include the address bar and search bar). In such cases you should use the alternate keyboard shortcut if one is listed below.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perf...

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