Haha, I just switched from Chrome to Firefox because I hate how Chrome prioritizes Google Search over my previous history. It's idiotic.

Here, let me show you a clear example.

http://i.imgur.com/uNsh7Yv.png

Firefox clearly has the superior bar.

I've personally internalized the downdown for going to things I've gone to before.

However, I do brand new searches constantly. Often 20+ a day, that often look similar to older searches, but aren't quite.

Now, whether I've developed that behavior because of Chrome, or because it works well for me, is a question for itself.

Also, since I'm here- anyone get frequent fuckups lately in the Chrome omnibar, not searching what you put in, to instead search something you HAVE searched before?

For example, before, I've searched "javascript array"

But this time, I am wanting to search "javascript string concatenation". I type that into Chrome, hit enter...

...up pops the search results for "javascript array". It started about a month ago, and is really annoying.

> It started about a month ago, and is really annoying.

Yes, I have been encountering the same behavior. It is infuriating because it's impossible to tell when this is going to happen. This is separate from pulling up different searches I've used before, this bug seems to be something like "ignore what you type completely".

(this is on a Mac)

In Firefox, the hotkey "cmd-K" will put focus into the search bar at the top.

In Chrome they don't have a keybind set to this by default (though on Windows they seem to). But if you open mac System Preferences, go to Keyboard, then Keyboard Shortcuts, and add an Application Shortcut for Chrome, you set the menu item name to "Search the Web..." and the keybind to whatever you want (I used "cmd-K").

So that way regardless if I'm in Firefox or chrome, pressing cmd-K will put me in a place I can search.

also, cmd-l (go to the awesomebar) and start with a ? to always search.

you can also have different engines

    ?cat 

will search your default engine for cat

i have one for ddg so

    ddg cat

searches duck duck go for cat etc. its fantastic

I've been encountering this, I thought I was just losing my small collection of marbles!

I have a new dev laptop in the mail, perhaps Firefox will get installed before chrome...

Is it associated with Google Instant failing?

I've noticed frequently Google Instant will fail half way through searching, and it will ignore everything I typed and just go with what Instant guessed before it crapped out.

If Instant is prioritizing your previous search, it may be linked.

This definitely could be what it is.

All the time. I'm not sure how to not activate auto-completion sometimes.

But this isn't auto-completion, this is just plain ignoring what I typed.

Also, putting "* " in the awesomebar before typing searches your search string limits the results to bookmarks. Here is a list of these prefixes: Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history. Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks. Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged. Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs. Add ~ to search for matches in pages you've typed. Add # to search for matches in page titles. Add @ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs).

You can deactive this in chrome://settings/. I did it after your post. I find it also annoying.

I am surprised not a lot of people at HN do this. Disabling predictive service is one of the first things I do after installing chrome on a new machine. Something about sending every keystroke made on the omnibar to Google makes me feel uneasy, it could also be the paranoid in me talking.

I would still like the search results to show up though. Just prioritized lower than my history.

What setting do you change?

[] Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar

Maybe that one.

So that's why every time I start typing a reddit url, Chrome suggests I visit http://www.reddit.com/r/gone wild (sic, with the space in there).

There are a number of reasons why they really need to rethink this, default it off, or do some better filtering. Didn't impact me personally beyond the confusion but I could imagine that URL and maybe some others coming up in what appears to be someone's unique search or browsing history raising some interesting questions at work and/or at home for some users.

I like Safari's solution best.

Hit space and you get recent searches.

Start typing and you get suggestions.

You can have a pretty close approximation on chrome with this plugin (fauxbar): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fauxbar/hibkhcnpka...

It searches your history and bookmarks too, which is what the awesome bar does.

Aurelio's used to have amazing pizza before the original owners sold it and it became a franchise. Don't waste your money, there's plenty of better options.

Also, I agree with you regarding Chrome's Google search priorities.

Supposedly the one in Homewood, not the origional location, but the origional town and ovens is still good. I enjoy it at least, but I grew up on it.

I appreciate this feature on mobile as it can help save me some more time-consuming taps, but I don't use it on Chrome since I can type faster than I can browse through the results it's guessing at.

yeah and you can get chrome behavior in ff in the search bar, too. well except for the bug of course. The ff search bar does search for what you typed, not what you typed last. (and does shows instant results, too) best of both worlds.

I disagree. I think most people use the bar for searches, not their bookmarks.

Sure, but I don't really need the bar's help to type my search term. I do need its help to search my history/bookmarks.

Your comparison would be stronger if you searched for the same string in both.

If anything, I've given Chrome a bigger crutch by giving it more letters to work with. And it's still worse than FF. ;)

Perhaps so, but it still seems unscientific. I even left out that an even better test would be if you had identical history in both browsers (which I know would be inconvenient to set up). I honestly do not understand why I am being downvoted.

Like sergiotapia, I'm very close to switching back to FireFox /because/ of the Awesomebar. However, for me, it's because it matches my search history better. Let's say I'm working on a page call /editor/?id=1234, in FireFox, typing 1234 will show that page as the first match, whereas Chrome doesn't even match it unless I start typing /editor/, and sometimes even the root domain. It's very frustrating.

HackerNews is the best example for me. In firefox, I can type in y, and it will know that I want news.ycombinator.com. In Chrome, the only way to have it autocomplete (at least the last time I tried it) was to start with n.

I always visit by going to hackerne.ws, so I hit H in Chrome.

I prefer Firefox Awesomebar as I find that when I type something in to search my browsing history it usually returns what I was looking for.. Chrome not so much. EDIT: what sergiotapia said ^^^

I removed search box from Firefox few months ago and never looked back. I use search engine keywords instead[1]. My current keywords include goog, bing, amzn, crate, and wiki. Guess what search engine they refer to. :)

[1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

I really, really prefer the search box. For me, searching the web and searching my history are very different intents; so activating them with different keystrokes doesn't seem like much of a burden.

I did too, but Google instant changed things. Try this:

1) Set your search engine to Google (if it isn't currently)

2) Remove the search bar.

3) Press ctrl+k (cmd+k) and start typing. You'll be searching on Google's site, by far the best search experience with Google Instant on.

The only downside is that you need a reasonably fast, low-latency connection for it to work well[1].

[1] Fine with decent Internet service, but what a downside it is on a lesser connection. The ~0.5-1 sec delay was unbearable on a 3Mbps DSL connection with average latency.

I often use the search box for of stuff other than googling. (Wikipedia, Amazon, arxiv, and a couple of specific wikis.)

You'll love this https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-find-your-b...

+1 ... except that gg is a keyword for DuckDuckGo. I just couldn't switch my finger memory from gg, so I rather switched the alias ;)

In my experience, Omnibar is giving me worse and worse results. sergiotapia's example mirriors my experience lately.

That said, Omnibar in Incognito Mode works well, because it only searches my history (which is what I want).

Edit: chrome://history is pretty cool, too.

There's a Firefox addon called Instantfox [1] which makes the Awesomebar behave somewhat more like the Omnibar. Possibly too much so, depending on your preferences.

[1]: http://www.instantfox.net/

I preferred Chrome's Omnibar to Firefox's AwesomeBar as well, but then I found this FF add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/omnibar/. One advantage I have always preferred with FireFox is that it's add-ons can have tighter integration with the browser than Chrome's extensions. In example, one such add-on that Chrome can't do is FireFox's Last-Tab add-on. It lets you switch between tabs in the order they were used. After getting used to that work flow, I have a hard time using any browser other than FF. To me, Firefox seems more extensible than Chrome.

Chrome's Omnibar constantly auto-completes searches I did earlier in the day and week, so that I often have to press delete before enter. And there is no settings toggle to turn this off.

(I'm not talking about the completion dropdown or what it contains, I'm talking about how the typed text in the input area has selected text appended to it when it happens to be a prefix for an earlier search.)

Between this, the lack of tree style tabs, and the weird text selection algorithm, I'm generally sticking with Firefox.

I like how Firefox completes the site I want with only typing 1 or 2 characters in the address bar. Also Firefox has a separate search bar that supports plugins (dictionaries, CPAN and stuff like that)