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.)
45 Comments | Tags: AwesomeBar, Mozilla, Ph.D.
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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.
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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
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it took me a while to start getting used to this, and I love it now.
this changes things. VERY nicely done.
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Yea, Opera already does that…
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FF 3’s address bar is nice, but I think Opera 9.5’s address bar is better.
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Do you people ever look at things from another angle?!?
What if one day you start your car and shifting into 4th gear puts it in reverse instead?!? Oops sorry, car manufacturer has released an update last night which changes the default behavior of your transmission to the new, improved behavior.
I already wrote on my website how some UI changes should not be forced like this one. I said:
“If you are serious developer you don’t make such a drastic UI change a new default. You make an option and allow people to switch it on if they want.”
“Going to about:config, finding out about option.this.and.that and figuring out proper numerical value for restoring previous default behavior is not something I enjoy doing after my browser gets updated automatically. It is a waste of time and it should be a checkbox in preferences.”
You are breaking two serious UI rules here:
1. Do not force the option which involves changing user’s habits to be the new default
2. Do not introduce new behavior without having an easily accessible way to fully revert to the old behavior.
While you are spouting how awesome this crappy change is, many people do not agree and want it gone ASAP because they worked efficiently without it and now have to waste time adapting themselves.
Here check it out for yourselves:
http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=sk&comments_parentId=37784&forumId=1
I mean how retarded you must be to include bookmarks in location bar search?!? If I had it bookmarked I would have clicked it, not searched for it for God sake!
So, back to the drawing board — release Firefox 3.1, get rid of that AwesomeCrapBar by default and leave the option in preferences to turn it on for those who actually want it.
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Fully agree with Igor. This “awesome” bar is anything BUT awesome. It took me several tries to get the thing to act the way I want it to act. I have favorites/bookmarks for a reason, I don’t need it to show up in my address bar. Get rid of this thing!!!!
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The so-called “Awesome Bar” is a flaming turd that should’ve been flushed down the commode of invidiousness a year ago.
At least it’s capable of being disabled.
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I agree, that bar is awesome. My only problem is that when I use Firefox 3 on my old PC with 512 MB of RAM, it lags and trashes my HDD like hell. I have a huge history of visited sites so I guess it takes a while for it to search through.
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