4 November 2007 - 20:50SmartBar to AwesomeBar
One of the most useful features in Firefox 3 is the smarter location bar which now selects pages from your history and bookmarks if your input matches any part of them. For comparison, Firefox 2 would only match the beginning of the URL - typically the domain name.
When the “smart” bar first landed, I was somewhat disoriented because I was so used to typing domain names to browse history and Firefox didn’t give those results back. For example, I would type “en” (for en.wikipedia.org) but get random results that happened to match “component,” “en-US,” “engineering,” etc.
There were some changes to the location bar to help address these issues, but more importantly, I soon learned to use it by typing in words from the middle of the URL or title. For example, I now type the course number 426 [cs.uiuc.edu] instead of typing out the whole “cs.uiuc.edu…” and scrolling down to pick that one out of the other classes that show up in my history. I can’t even use Firefox 2 in the computer labs anymore because it doesn’t have the “SmartBar” — others share [dietrich.ganx4.com] this same experience [blog.mozilla.com]. 
While the SmartBar is pretty smart, it can get confused sometimes. It currently ranks the results based on how often you’ve visited that page, so if you visit bugzilla.mozilla.org every day, typing any letter that matches the page will have it ranked first. This is fine by itself, but if you happen to visit other pages like planet.mozilla.org but not as frequently as bugzilla, Firefox will place bugzilla above planet if you type “moz”.
That’s not really too big of an issue because I happen to always go to those pages by typing other words: bugzilla.mozilla.org and planet.mozilla.org. However, if I wanted to visit mozillazine, Firefox puts other pages ahead of it. Every time I type “moz,” I only want to select the mozillazine entry. I want that entry to be the first result.
In comes AwesomeBar! 
That’s exactly what I’ve done for adaptive learning url bar autocomplete [bugzilla.mozilla.org]. Firefox will remember the text you typed and the page you selected, so next time when you give a similar input, Firefox will give a higher rank to those pages. It even matches partial inputs, so I can even type just “p” from planet, and Firefox knows to put that above other pages that just happen to also match “p”.
Continuing my example of bugzilla, planet, mozillazine.. The first time around, I type “mozillazine” and press down and enter to select the entry. Next time, when I type just “moz,” Firefox remembers that I selected forums.mozillazine.org and places it as the first result.
Assuming that I can convince some people that we should have this in Firefox 3, we can potentially get this in as early as Beta 2. There’s still a lot of opportunity for other adaptive techniques throughout Firefox, but even just looking at the AwesomeBar, there’s room to make it even smarter — adapting to shifting behavior. For example, Firefox has learned that you always visit planet when typing “plan,” but you’ve started doing development and now frequent xulplanet. Firefox could then realize it should give less ranking to planet.m.o and give more to xulplanet.
I’m sure others will come in and create great new adaptive techniques for Firefox. In the mean time, I’ll need to continue working on my Ph.D. research which happens to be somewhat related — making new adaptive compiler techniques that take advantage of key hardware features. 
(Post date bumped up for planet.mozilla.org.)
26 Comments | Tags: Mozilla, Ph.D.
04 Nov 2007 - 16:37
[…] adaptively learn how to sort the results. He’s got a really cool post about his work here that you should go read right now. It has pictures even! […]
05 Nov 2007 - 3:09
It would be even nicer if FF doesn’t forget my URL’s anymore.
Secondly the boldface (or other indication) of where the match is in the autocomplete list makes it even more awesome.
05 Nov 2007 - 23:26
[…] heavily on the new Places infrastructure, polishing and tweaking the “awesome bar” and other UI improvements making it easier to search your local history and bookmarks, as […]
06 Nov 2007 - 0:27
[…] heavily on the new Places infrastructure, polishing and tweaking the “awesome bar” and other UI improvements making it easier to search your local history and bookmarks, as well […]
06 Nov 2007 - 10:53
[…] One of the cool new UI enhancements related to Places is what’s being called the “awesome bar“. In Firefox 2 (as well as most other web browsers), when you type into the location bar, it […]
07 Nov 2007 - 7:11
[…] heavily on the new Places infrastructure, polishing and tweaking the “awesome bar” and other UI improvements making it easier to search your local history and bookmarks, as well […]
08 Nov 2007 - 13:02
Here is a little troll of some kind. One feature i’d love to see in FF 3: last folder used selected by default in the bookmark saving window. I mean, i ‘ve just been on that site i love so much and wanted to bookmark several pages… you must browse the full dam list to get your folder back up the list again… i switched to Safari (sorry, :-#)
I’m just so thrilled about the whole concept underlying FF i cry my soul out every time i find Safari easier
20 Nov 2007 - 12:00
[…] overwhelming users with complexity, this is a huge release for us and the Mozilla community. Awesomebar, new mac theme (as an add-on), Places and one click bookmarking, progress on a new Linux theme, […]
20 Nov 2007 - 15:01
[…] overwhelming users with complexity, this is a huge release for us and the Mozilla community. Awesomebar, new mac theme (as an add-on), Places and one click bookmarking, progress on a new Linux theme, […]
20 Nov 2007 - 15:18
[…] mentioned the new “awesomebar” in a previous post. In short, it’s a modified autocomplete mechanism for the location […]
30 Nov 2007 - 10:55
[…] dubbed it the “almighty bar” (another nickname on the path of ongoing transition to the “awesome bar”) which is a pretty great name for describing the […]
04 Dec 2007 - 7:51
[…] האחרון כמה בלוגים שבמדברים על ה-Firefox החדש, וספציפית על סרגל הכתובות החדש שמוצא דפים בהיסטוריה לא רק לפי התחלת ה-URL. זה אכן מגניב […]
11 Dec 2007 - 5:40
[…] scrivi sempre Open Space per andare sul forum di Multiplayer te lo dar come primo risultato, vedi qui). Tu adesso usi l’integrazione con il “mi sento fortunato” di google giusto?(scrivi una parola, dai […]
03 Jan 2008 - 21:39
[…] the location bar or its autocomplete dropdown - the awesome bar changes will likely cause some code changes for […]
03 Jan 2008 - 23:39
[…] the location bar or its autocomplete dropdown - the awesome bar changes will likely cause some code changes for […]
06 Jan 2008 - 7:42
[…] been over two months since I first posted about the AwesomeBar [ed.agadak.net], and some of you have been able experience the power of the learning behavior. […]
19 Jan 2008 - 10:04
[…] the work on the AwesomeBar [ed.agadak.net], I’ve noted before that getting relevant results [ed.agadak.net] in the […]
23 Jan 2008 - 6:08
[…] Way to Awesome For the work on the AwesomeBar [ed.agadak.net], I’ve noted before that getting relevant results [ed.agadak.net] in the location […]
03 Mar 2008 - 9:56
[…] been exactly four months since I first wrote about the AwesomeBar [ed.agadak.net], and how it would become awesome with adaptive learning, which makes Firefox give […]
03 Mar 2008 - 23:04
[…] Awesome It’s been exactly four months since I first wrote about the AwesomeBar [ed.agadak.net], and how it would become awesome with adaptive learning, which makes Firefox give […]
24 Mar 2008 - 16:55
it took me a while to start getting used to this, and I love it now.
this changes things. VERY nicely done.
28 Mar 2008 - 12:47
[…] little useless capsule button? Not so useless anymore. And having the full awesome power of the AwesomeBar available on Cmd-L in a collapsed toolbar? I can’t even tell you how cool that […]
28 Mar 2008 - 16:01
[…] little useless capsule button? Not so useless anymore. And having the full awesome power of the AwesomeBar available on Cmd-L in a collapsed toolbar? I can’t even tell you how cool that is. addthis_url = […]
02 Apr 2008 - 5:18
[…] almost every way, but the most apparent and the most useful of all that I’ve seen so far is the new Location Bar, also dubbed the AwesomeBar by some of the Mozilla […]
11 Apr 2008 - 10:43
[…] it plans to include in the future, like support for add-ons, support for web applications, an AwesomeBar, one-click bookmarking, and inertial scrolling - the last two of which are currently available in […]
14 Apr 2008 - 12:03
[…] it plans to include in the future, like support for add-ons, support for web applications, an AwesomeBar, one-click bookmarking, and inertial scrolling - the last two of which are currently available in […]