How do I adjust auto-complete order in the address bar?
I recently upgraded from Firefox 3 to 8.
In Firefox 3, when I selected an address out of the autocomplete list very often, it would eventually rise to the top of the list, so I could just enter a single character and hit enter.
In Firefox 8, that no longer works. An address that I only used a single time remains on top, in favor of a site I visit daily.
How do I revert to Firefox 3 behaviour?
الحل المُختار
If you are familiar with changing your config entries for Firefox, you can tell Firefox to ignore domain prefixes. See about:config and use "fixup" without the quotes in the filter bar to see the entries affected.
In the meanwhile, try entering "orf" and "fahr" in the url/location bar rather than qualifying the full domain. I believe this new behavior is by design.
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Please see the support article on Location bar autocomplete:
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Location%20bar%20autocomplete
and the article on smart keywords at:
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
The functionality in Firefox has changed some. Sometimes people type in a keyword and make a typo, and can then be directed to an unwanted page. The new functionality helps to keep that from happening, and it helps with security.
You might find the information at:
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Location%20bar%20search
to be helpful to you, as it shows you how to disable the default keyword search behavior that gives the results you are describing.
To use the feature, you should use <domain name> <subject> for the lookup to work best. E.g., espn football
If this answer has solved your problem, please mark the question as "Solved". This way you will help others in a similar situation.
None of the above really helped, and I had read part of it previously.
With 12 years of software engineering experience in complex user interfaces, it "smells" like a bug to me, because of the peculiar first result I get.
To explain that, let me give to all the data:
1) I regularly visit www.orf.at, an Austrian news site. 2) I sometimes visit fahrplan.oebb.at, which shows timetables of the Austrian railway trains.
When I start typing "www.o", I expect to get 1), because a) the textual match is better b) I visit the site more often, and I have visited it more recently
Instead, 2) is on top of the list.
Therefore, I suspect that the new algorithm does not cope well when comparing addresses that start with "www" as to those that don't.
What makes the "smell" strong is the fact that I can't seem to "teach" the browser the "correct" order of the list, however often I manually select the desired entry. This is something that worked flawlessly in Firefox 3.
الحل المُختار
If you are familiar with changing your config entries for Firefox, you can tell Firefox to ignore domain prefixes. See about:config and use "fixup" without the quotes in the filter bar to see the entries affected.
In the meanwhile, try entering "orf" and "fahr" in the url/location bar rather than qualifying the full domain. I believe this new behavior is by design.
Hmmm...I'm so used to typing "www." at the beginning, I didn't really think about that. Without it, it seems to work. Thanks!