7mo ago

Firefox search box jumps focus to address bar

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Firefox new tab has a box in the middle of the page for you to click in and enter text to search in your default search engine - and it immediately starts typing in the URL bar. IF I WANTED TO USE THE URL BAR I WOULD CLICK THERE.

Throws me off every time.

33 comments

in about:config change browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar to false
- That's...Awesome! Thank you!
- Thanks, that worked.
- My hero!
- So, changing that setting totally fixed the "issue" for me, for almost a week - but now the cursor is back to jumping up to the address bar from search, and that setting is still set to false. Any other settings you can think of to change?

I'm more wondering why you're clicking on the completely unnecessary box to begin with. It never made sense to add these, might as well just render a giant upwards arrow.
- Well ... the box is just a remenant of the search web pages.
  I think it does make sense to have a separate search box for web-only searches tough. Say you're sitting next to a coworker and you're talking about Anna Karenina and you want to look something up, but typing "an.." in the address bar will pull up "Anastasia likes it big and hard" from your bookmarks because you forgot to disable bookmark search

It's open source software, raise an issue/bug report if this is unexpected behavior. The community is open and responsive to feedback. Posting here won't get it fixed.
- Posting here did get it fixed for him.
- The purpose of this community is not to get things fixed, it's to have a place to complain about things that are mildly irritating. For all you know, OP did raise a ticket. That doesn't mean they can't also complain about the issue here.

To be fair, moving to the top allows for much more space for the list of predictions, so there's at least some benefit to ir

I can't recall this wasn't a thing. Mildly infuriating surely. What's really infuriating though...
Also, if my single keyword search matches an url in my history, it will happily open the url instead of doing a search. Aargh...
Happens quite a lot so I learned to hit the space-bar after a single keyword search.
- That's a feature, not a bug, and I personally love it.
  There's an about:config setting for that, too. browser.urlbar.autoFill = false
  
  I like the autofill too, just not when I type in the search bar. I like the url and search functions separated in their own bars.
- Glad I'm not only one who space bars after!
  Also fixes autofill when you are trying to search a new query that starts with same string
- This happens to me often. I don't learn, unlike you.
  Always trying to go too fast.
  
  At least you are literate and a scholar in self deprecation.
  Meself, I can push a space-bar quite good after I recall what I was searching for.
- Type the thing, when autocomplete is shown, press backspace; then search. The backspace will remove the completion
  
  Thank you for the tip.

I think this has been a thing for awhile.

Preach!
I thought I was the only one bothered by this behaviour!

It's been that way for quite some time.

This exact thing was missing me off last night. Glad I'm not the only one

Definitely illogical and judging by the comments here, its a number of us who notice. It's odd, because they went through the effort to preserve the option of separate search and address bars.

I think chrome does this too right

browser history

I don't understand the whiners. This makes literally 0 difference other than you get added functionality of being able to search within your history, tabs, other search engines, etc.
They might as well just remove the stupid search bar on the new tab page.
- yes, it does, search box and 'awesomebar' can be configured to behave differently for search. this handoff messes with that distinction.

But don't you know? The software developers know better than you do what you want. Resistance is futile. Comply citizen. Comply.
- As others have pointed out, open an issue/bug report if there is a problem. What do you expect them to do? Check social media 24/7 to see if someone complains?
  
  No, not at all, I'm not sure where you got that idea from.
  What I'm talking about is when developers (or anyone else designing a public interface) utilise something which produces unintuitive results - in this case it's the idea that when a user clicks in a box in the middle of the screen, the next thing that happens is that typed text appears somewhere other than where they clicked.
  That's not a bug, that's just bad design.
  I was sympathising with the OP who encountered this particular example, but also making fun of a general trend for this sort of thing, where companies and designers sometimes seem to think that regardless of what the user did, they should be railroaded into doing what the designer wants them to do.
  It's the wrong approach IMO, and leads to frustrating interactions with software. Or at least mildly irritating ones.

Change for the sake is change is always good. They made it so it must be gold. /s

33 comments