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'intelligent' address bar no longer works.

  • 5 replies
  • 57 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by nfayers1986

nfayers1986
nfayers1986
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I used to be able to type into the address bar a phrase and firefox would automatically work out where i wanted to go (e.g. facebook resulted in www.facebook.com; ISO 14001 wiki went to the wikipedia article for ISO14001). Now when i attempt this i get AVG search results page.

How can I stop this happening, as this intelligence is one of the main reasons i use firefox? I have tried disabling AVG safesearch, this had no effect.

I used to be able to type into the address bar a phrase and firefox would automatically work out where i wanted to go (e.g. facebook resulted in www.facebook.com; ISO 14001 wiki went to the wikipedia article for ISO14001). Now when i attempt this i get AVG search results page. How can I stop this happening, as this intelligence is one of the main reasons i use firefox? I have tried disabling AVG safesearch, this had no effect.

Chosen solution

You are describing the Google browse by name feature which is the default behavior on Firefox 3.6

To get this behavior on Firefox 4 you need to change a hidden preference.

  1. Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
  2. Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
  3. Locate the preference keyword.URL, double-click on it and change its value to the link shown below

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

If you prefer, you can also do this by installing the Browse by Name extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/browse-by-name

Read this answer in context 👍 7

All Replies (5)

TonyE
TonyE
  • Moderator
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Chosen Solution

You are describing the Google browse by name feature which is the default behavior on Firefox 3.6

To get this behavior on Firefox 4 you need to change a hidden preference.

  1. Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
  2. Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
  3. Locate the preference keyword.URL, double-click on it and change its value to the link shown below

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

If you prefer, you can also do this by installing the Browse by Name extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/browse-by-name

ST71
ST71
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I did the changes and it worked really well. But when I opened a new window the problem was there again... Any solution on this problem?

TonyE
TonyE
  • Moderator
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This link may help - https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Preferences+are+not+saved

ST71
ST71
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I didn´t have any file called user.js, so the problem is still there :-(

nfayers1986
nfayers1986 Question owner
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@TonyE thankyou for this fix, sorry it took so long to reply,, exam period and all that! @ST71 I had exact the same problem, mine kept reverting to AVG search, but it has now stopped. All I had to do was turn my laptop off, a very rare occurence, normally I put her to standby and come back in an hour to carry on. might be worth doing the fix as described, shutting down immediately after then rebooting, see if it holds. if its AVG like mine, check your add-ons, I've disabled some to make this stick.

good luck!