Firefox 3 AwesomeBar

[Ben Scott]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 11:23 PM, Arc Riley <arcriley at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm the kind of user who tends to have a few dozen tabs open so I don't
> loose things ...

  I do that, too.  I use an extension called "Tree Style Tabs" to
organize that sort of thing.  One search leads to another search,
which leads to a site which opens six more tabs.  So that all gets
organized into a hierarchical history.  It helps me organize my
thinking when I'm researching something, especially when I don't know
exactly what I'm looking for.

> Now I can actually only keep open the tabs I'm using, just star'ing
> the ones I want to remember.

  I hadn't noticed this feature.  For those wondering (as I was, for a
minute): There's now a star-shaped icon in location bar.  It works
like the stars in Gmail do.  Click-to-toggle.  Starred pages show up
(only) in the bookmark manager window under an "Unorganized Bookmarks"
folder.  I can see that becoming useful.  Sort of like one's one
personal Google.  Just star anything you find worthwhile.  Filters out
all the other stuff a web search usually finds.  Not sure I'll use it,
but it seems like a useful idea.

  Personally, I think I'd find the AwesomeBar useful, too, if it
didn't trigger automatically, but instead needed some kind of hotkey,
first.  Like [CTRL]+[F] to find text on a page.  But someone commented
that many people don't use features that require action to use them.
Someone else (not me, but I agree) responded in turn that browser
developers seem intent on turning the web into a television.

-- Ben