Firefox 3 AwesomeBar

[VirginSnow at vfemail.net]

> Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:28:48 -0400
> From: "Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com>

>   For those who don't know, the location bar in Firefox 3 has been
> "improved" to be a search engine with real-time feedback.  If I start
> typing "gnh" to get, oh the GNHLUG website, like I would in Fx 2.0, it
> instead does a full-text partial-word match on everything it can find:

Actually, I was wondering why the devs didn't implement that
functionality initially and hoping that, someday, they would.

It seems like it'd be a step forward... maybe an example would help:

  Say I'm looking for something called "gnhlug", but its URL is
  http://www.gnhlug.org/

Typing "gnhl" in the NEW address bar would get me
"http://www.gnhlug.org/", among other URLs.  Typing "gnhl" in the OLD
address bar wouldn't do squat.  You'd have to type "www" into the old
address bar... and that would return everything starting with "www"
(i.e., half the universe).  So, you end up having to type "www.gnhl"
to get where you want to be.  Extra typing.  Bad.

There are also situations in which you can remember the name (or a
keyword in the title of) a site you visited, but don't remember its
domain name.  Say you recently visited an icecast on xiph.org and want
to return to it.  If you type "Punk", you're going to be able to find
the page.  You'd probably never think to type "xiph" into the address
bar.

Admittedly, I haven't tried the new address bar yet.  So I don't know
whether or not, *in practice*, this turns out to be a good idea.  I'm
going to have to build firefox and find out for myself how much I
really (dis)like my brilliant idea. ;)