Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Addressbar

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Showing non-latin characters in address bar

When nonlatin characters are used in address they are urlencoded. Many sites use them. Wikipedia is an example. But URL shown in an addressbar gets totally unreadable, like http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%96%D1%8F.

Such URL is not an easy thing write down on paper for example. It would be nice if such URLs were shown more like this (the non-latin part could be highlighted or formatted to prevent phishing): http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Вікіпедія

References

• Locationbar²

Auto-paging

• When a numeric portion of the URL in the address bar is highlighted, allow it to be incremented/decremented using the mouse wheel, PgUp/PgDn, scroll arrows, or some other method. E.g., http://www.example.com/photo1.jpg; highlight '1' and scroll to view photo2.jpg, etc.

Searching from Location bar

• When typing in the URL bar, have an option in the auto-complete menu to search for the entered text at the user's choice of Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc. Note: this feature already exists in the Mozilla SeaMonkey browser. If the code is compatible it could just be copied.

OR

• Merge functionality of location bar and search bar: When typing in the URL, show both autocomplete and google suggestions (preferrably google suggestions first. Explanation: this helps a lot newbie users; also a lot of users tend to use the drop-down button to go to previously visited urls instead of using the autocomplete feature). Something like this (well not just like that, i just hidden the location bar and moved the search bar in place): http://tinyurl.com/yl24y3

• Bring back the simple, down-arrow functionality of the Mozilla suite address bar, where the user can type in words for a search and down arrow to send that term to the search-engine preference. It shouldn't be exactly like in Mozilla, but allow the user to switch what engine is default. Instead of always being Google, one could change it to Yahoo! or Wikipedia.

OR

• Set up like Mozilla suite where you hit down to search. Instead of only allowing Google, it could have a right arrow. When you put your mouse over it, it would expand to allow selection of search engine. It would be nice, again, to have the default engine selectable.

Autocomplete

• middle of word
• local filenames
• user's bookmarks
• using history frequency for relevance
• Further refinement (and strengthening of match) could be made by offering a list of likely alternatives, selectable via arrow keys in a drop-down menu
• using addresses for which a password is known, or are otherwise marked as 'trusted' (marked as allow script, allow cookie, allow xpi install, etc)
• all of above make autocomplete still useful after clearing private data or migrating from IE
• the ability to maintain an autocomplete list so that only desired URLs are autocompleted (a function in the interest of maintaining privacy, but leaving functionality)
• keyword bookmarks - when predefined word(s)/characters are entered into the address bar, the URL assigned to the keyword is loaded. For example entering 'slash' could load slashdot.org or 'go' could load google.com
• Make autocomplete function more like a shell's tab completion in that it matches the longest common substring. See Bug #109758

References

• Similar to AppRocket on Windows and Quicksilver for OS X
• remarks from bur
• Autocomplete Manager extension provides some of this

Autocorrection

• Allow to correct automatically badly entered domain names (ex: www;domain;com instead of www.domain.com very often with the french keyboards) ;
• Allow to correct automatically badly entered top level domains (ex: .xom instead of .com or .comù instead of .com) ;
• Allow to correct automatically badly entered sub domains (ex: xxx. instead of www. or wwww. instead of www.) ;
• Allow to correct automatically recurrent typed adresses (ex: www.goiogle.com instead of www.google.com, www.imedia.biz instead of www.imedias.biz or www.youtube.net instead of www.youtube.com) by looking in the favorites and history ;
• Allow to transcode addresses entered incorrectly in different keyboard layout (e.g. Cyrillic цццюьщяшддфющкп to www.mozilla.org) ;

This could be implemented as a smart algorithm. Whenever the user types an invalid adress, Firefox remembers this and if the address typed in right after this is correct (by correctly pointing to a site) a match is created. If the difference is not too large between the wrongly typed one, and the correct one, this get's saved as a correction and will automatically execute.

Alternatively, string metrics can be used to find matches of already typed (and correct) URLs, and automatically redirect the user. Perhaps this is a cleaner solution.

Usually when an incorrect address is typed, the user knows almost immediately. Ingore pages that are only displayed for less than 5 seconds.

Alternately, it could be done as so:

When a page is entered into the address bar, and it is a dead link, it could pop down a yellow bar (like when a pop-up is blocked) and ask "Did you mean...?" It would show pages most like what you entered and could also allow for checking the google cache or internet archive of the page (in case it used to exist).

If it seems likely it was a misspelling (such as google.con instead of google.com) it could automatically redirect to it. It would still be nice to have the bar pop down, but this time to notify you what happened, similar to openoffice.org notifying you of any auto-correct.

Provide basic site navigation from address bar

When I use news aggregation sites like slashdot and digg that provide deep links to stories on other sites, I invariably find myself wanting to look at the home page or perhaps even parent of the current URL.

It would be a very useful feature to provide hotkeys that manipulate the URL in the addressbar. At least 2 operations spring to mind:

• get server URL
• get parent URL

References

• See Link Widgets
  • ...works best with Status Buttons 1.0, basic site navigation buttons could be placed on the status line this way, so it's no longer «just taking away screen space» as the above fellow said.

Contextual menu

• Contextual menu on each address including "Open", "Open in a new tab" ...
• An option to remove an address from the list. (contextual menu on address ?)
• Also in the contextual menu, add "Delete address".
• On right click, adding also a "paste & go" item

References

• Like in Opera browser
  • Note: Middle click already does this if you turn it on (and it's on by default on Linux)
• bug 216667

Location Bar should sort based on order visited

All major browser order the entries of the location bar based on last visited. Example: if I type "yahoo.com", then "google.com", the order is:

• google.com
• yahoo.com

If I then type "yahoo.com" again, the order is:

• yahoo.com
• google.com

The order also changes if I open the location bar and select an entry with the mouse.

Sorting this way worked in early releases of Firefox 0.9.X. There is a bug filed in bugzilla for which the fixing is postphoned from one release to the other. Please make sure that it is included in Firefox 2.5, 3.0 or whatever it is.

References

• bug 258107

Keybindings

• Ability to customise what happens when ctrl-enter is pressed (command-enter for Macs) in the address bar and search bar. Some users want ctrl-enter to open a new tab. This will make the "ctrl == new tab" concept more pervasive. Currently, control-clicking on a link in a web page causes it to open a new tab. Also, most tabbed browsers open up a new tab upon ctrl-enter anyway, including older versions of Firefox itself. Whatever the default setting may be, it would be nice if the user could configure this. Also, some users want ctrl-enter behave just like plain enter. These users usually wanted to type ctr-v, enter, but accidentally held ctrl down too long, hence it gets registered ast ctrl-v, ctrl-enter.
• Also, same thing goes for option-enter (alt-enter(?) on Windows). The "option == download url" concept has existed in older versions of Firefox as well as other tabbed browsers. While option-click still allows download of links, it's hard to remember what the keybinding is for downloading from the url bar anymore since there is no longer a consistent concept behind it and not compatible with other browsers.

References

• bug 237027

Allow AJAX/frames-based sites to change location URL

A problem with Frames-based and DHTML / AJAX sites is that the page contents displayed can change but the location URL remains static, which impacts on the user's ability to bookmark page contents.

For security reasons (e.g. to prevent phishing) it is not possible from Javascript code to change the location URL displayed in the browser (except perhaps to add/change a "#" value, which is of limited use).

I propose that it should be possible to change the URL in other LIMITED ways, e.g.:

To any other URL with the *same* domain AND/OR To change the querystring

This could of course be configurable in the browser's Options, but one or both should be enabled by default, to allow web developers to make use of this feature to improve the user experience for most Firefox users.

Changing the "#" value, such as at Wikimapia is only of partial use and has limitations.

General Location bar improvements

• When the cursor is active and in the address bar <UP> will move the cursor to the start of the address string, and <DOWN> will move the cursor to the end of the string.
• Multi-line paste of URLs: When pasting a multi-line URL - such as when one copies a large URL from a text-only shell-based e-mail program - Firefox should automatically strip line breaks and elide what is pasted as a single line URL.

SVG File as Favicon

Allow website admins/designers to use Scalable Vector Graphics files as Favicons. This allows the use of visually appealing favicons with transparency. This is also ideal for displays with high resolutions, allowing the display of larger icons on such displays without website admins/designers having to modify the icon files.

Right-click option to export favicon.

Javascript manipulation of favicon.

Highlight the domain name

Make the domain name within the URL bold or otherwise highlighted to reduce the spoofing risks of complex URLs.

References

• Locationbar²

Show more security info

Show more security info for secure sites in the URL bar, such as the name of the company to which the cert was issued.

Nice feature in IE

A feature absent from FireFox: When you click a link in IE, the page starts loading the page. Sometimes you have connection problems (etc.) so the page remains blank. In the interest of time, you can click "Stop" (to stop downloading the page), and when you do that, IE displays the the page's URL in the address bar, even if the page failed to load. This is absent from FireFox and you have to guess which link you clicked that isn't opening now.

Another nice feature in IE

I haven't figured out what is the hotkey of the address bar, could you make it to be F4, just like IE, it would be easier to change the address. Or may be F2 because it's the hotkey used in several applications to change the name or text of anything. Or even you could allow the user to change every hotkey the way he/she wants it, Firefox its very popular for its customization, this would help even more.

Edit:Err, sorry I found it F6, however the change or customization still stands for it.

Edit:Also Alt+D works for the purpose, both in FF and IE, for ages now

YubNub - YubNub.org

• Have Firefox's default addressbar searchengine set to YubNub instead of Google
• This can be done individually be changing keyword.URL in about:config from "http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&btnI=&q=" to "http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command="
• If you're new to YubNub you'll notice, upon inspection that this is not as bad of an idea as you think it is because YubNub's default engine IS Google. SO:

If you send the string "firefox" to YubNub, you will be immediately directed to "http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/", just as you would with Google. Also, if you send "wp firefox" to YubNub, you will be directed to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox. (WITHOUT having to have a local "wp" keyword setting. Essentially, using YubNub as a default would be a feature that would somewhat disrupt the Keyword Search feature, which in my opinion is a good thing because then talking about keyword search will be more standardized since all YubNub users will know the same one. "ls" lists the YubNub commands. "ls dictionary" list YubNub commands related to dictionary search.

Detach Go button from Addressbar

In 1.5, you could move the Go button to the left of the Addressbar, but in 2.0 the button is locked to the right end of the Addressbar. The left is possibly a better place for it because (a) when you paste a URL in the Addressbar, as with right-click menu, your eyes and mouse are focused at the left end of the Addressbar; and (b) when you type a URL, it is more likely to be a short one than a long one and your focus is at the left end of the Addressbar (although, admittedly, if you're typing you'd likely hit the enter key instead of the Go button). Detaching the Go button from the Addressbar (as it was in 1.5) allows the user to customize it in this way.

Ditch favicons for images

Whenever you load an image directly from Firefox, a resized version is used as the page's favicon. I have problems with this:
1. It serves little purpose, especially when no tabs are open.
2. The resized images are usually distorted (not every image has equal width and height)
3. When high-res images (say a 1024x768 picture) are resized to 16x16, it slows the mouse down when the mouse passes over the resized image. Similar to how a page scrolls badly when a resized (via HTML) high-res image is on it. Very, very annoying.

Better quick search

Make it the default that a quick search with no parameters goes the the home page of that website instead of doing a search for "%s". For example "yahoo mozilla" does a yahoo search for "mozilla". Just "yahoo" should go to "www.yahoo.com". Currently it goes to "http://www.yahoo.com/search?q=%s". I know that there is a hack around it. It would only take one line in the quick search properties, and not require any UI complications. Jon513 12:21, 27 November 2006 (PST)