... I never even thought of that. I always start with naive searches and then remember to add "site" refinements later as I mangle the search from the Google page, so I never actually try the "site:" qualifier right in the URL bar. That's a nasty one.

You can also press the down arrow button and press return as usual that gives the option to search even if what you type looks like a url to the browser. Also I just tried it and the default selection for what you quote is search not the url.

Just tried that (Firefox 25 on OSX). It didn't work. Down arrow does nothing, and there are no AwesomeBar matches, so there is no drop-down. Maybe you have some configuration option set?

Nope. When you type anything in the omnibox that chrome thinks is a url, it shows atleast 2 items in the dropdown one is go to url and other a search google for url. I can upload a screenshot when I am back home in a couple of hours.

Just put a question mark in front, and you shouldn't have an issue. I used to run into that problem all the time.

Not sure how it would work if you wanted to search Amazon or something...

Your example worked fine for me, and returned a list of search results from HN for me with the words 'foo' 'bar' and 'baz'.

Firefox 25 on OSX gives me:

  The address wasn't understood

  Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because
  the protocol (site) isn't associated with any program.

  You might need to install other software to open this
  address.

Firefox 21 on Ubuntu was giving me the same thing, I don't think I've tried it on Firefox 25 on my Ubuntu install.

Ctrl-K will put a ? in front to indicate a search term.

I've never experienced this behavior in Firefox. The Ctrl-K (or Cmd-K on OSX) combination this this:

- If the Search Box is in the toolbar, it puts the focus in the Search Box.

- If the Search Box is not in the toolbar, it navigates to Google.com (at least when Google is selected as the default search).

Are you sure you're not getting this from an addon?