Fixing the “AwesomeBar” in Firefox 3

Tuesday June 17, 2008 

If you’ve never tried Firefox, it might be a good idea to give it a try now that version 3 has been officially released.

While there are a number of great improvements in this version of the browser (with the memory leaks being fixed one of the most important), there was one feature that I wanted to fix as soon as I downloaded the official version this morning.

The Mozilla folks have ‘improved’ the address bar so that it shows a number of “suggestions” while you’re typing an address into the bar. At first these are based on popular sites, but eventually it’ll start picking up on your browsing history, and making suggestions based on that.

It’s hardly foolproof, though. When I enter “reader.” into the address bar, it should pick up on the fact that (based on my past browsing) I want reader.google.com to come up. But, neither of the two suggestions point to Google Reader. Instead they assume I mean a couple of GR sites on Blogger. And this is with me visiting the GR site on a daily basis.

So I set out to find out how to disable this feature, as it’s not something that I want in my browser. And Firefox is supposed to be the customizable browser, right?

So, with a bit of time on Google, I found the answer. You’ll need to enter ‘about:config‘ (minus the quotes) into the Firefox address bar, and make a change to one setting on the resulting page. In the filter, enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and the key should appear. Double click on it, and change the default value from 12 to 0. Once that’s done, the Firefox suggestions should stop.

This makes Firefox back into the browser that I want to keep using. Now if the add-on developers could finish making their add-ons compatible with the new version, it would be better still.

Filed Under Miscellaneous

Comments

6 Responses to “Fixing the “AwesomeBar” in Firefox 3”

  1. Dennis Edell on June 21st, 2008 11:50 am

    I was looking for how to downgrade to ver2 within minutes of upgrading…after browsing a bit, I found a LOT of folks looking for the same info.

    The address bar as you mentioned was the first extreme dislike.

    It saves EVERY LITTLE THING YOU CLICK ON.

    OMG could anything be more annoying?? My address bar is going to save the sites I want it to like always, or it will not get my usage.

    Damn shame too, MANY seem to be very disappointed in 3. Lots of ‘em calling it a flawed BETA and not a stable release.

    Sorry to vent all over ya :-)

  2. Dennis Edell on June 21st, 2008 11:52 am

    Oh duh, did your about:config just answer my problem? Will it stop the bar from saving every link I click on or just their suggestions?

  3. Rod on June 22nd, 2008 6:48 am

    Dennis: From what I can tell, yes, it will stop the bar from saving every one of your clicks. Hope it helps.

  4. Dennis Edell on June 22nd, 2008 12:48 pm

    I hope so. Supposedly ver2 is only supported through mid-December.

  5. Mack D. Male on June 22nd, 2008 8:24 pm

    Or you could just get Opera 9.5, which really does have an awesome bar! Heh…

  6. Rod on June 23rd, 2008 7:00 am

    Mack: I may just wind up giving Opera a try and see how it works out.

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