

Firefox 3 smart bar is just too smart - huhtenberg

[ <i>I don't have a blog, so I'll rant here instead</i> ]<p>FF3 came out today and I followed the crowd and upgraded to it. Within 5 minutes it became obvious that I passionately hated new "smart bar" feature.<p>A smaller thing was that it wasted tons of screen real estate and just didn't look esthetically pleasing. It rendered auto-complete items in two lines. It also made the whole list look like an Xmas tree with its liberal use of fonts, bolding and favicons. Apparently this particular "improvement" was so good that the FF3 devs removed a setting for disabling it from the about:config page. One now has to resort to using an add-on called "oldbar" instead. This made the suggestions list far more compact and it looked way cleaner and more usable.<p>However a far more annoying change was how smartbar populated the list. It matched what I typed not just to <i>the head</i> of the old URLs, but to any part in them. And to the bookmarks. And to the bookmark descriptions. And the page titles.<p>So typing "news" no longer brought up a list of news.ycombinator.com, news1130.com, etc, but rather slashdot.org (News for Nerds), digg.com (All News, Videos ..) and some other obscure URLs that I didn't even remember visiting. They say it learns and will eventually put most relevant URLs at the top of the list. Great, thanks. This just solved a problem that I didn't have to begin with. And it all would've been well, but here's a kicker - YOU CANNOT DISABLE THIS.<p>This leads me to the reason why I decided to make this post. This situation is a good example of how <i>not</i> to approach adding features to the application.<p>1. New features and behavioral patterns. These can be the defaults for new installs and this should gradually migrate everyone to the new feature set. However users arriving to a new version via an upgrade path should have their experience preserved as intact as possible.<p>2. Replacing features instead of adding them. You can bet that there are users that explicitly depend on existing behavior and taking it away is a big deal.<p>FF does not conform to these principles. Also by looking at the Mozilla forums it is obvious that the devs were aware of the problems these changes created, but decided to ignore them. Too bad really. It's not like it would've been too much work to handle these changes a bit more gracefully.<p>/eor
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bkrausz
While I agree that there should be a way to disable the awesome bar, it's
worth nothing that it does take some training and getting used to.

The awesome bar uses historical data from previous searches, so if your search
for "news" always ends with you clicking on HN, it will put that at the top.
Over time, the bar will learn your preferences and become much more useful.

I hated the bar at first, to the extent that I considered going back to FF2.
For example, I used to always type "en." to find a wikipedia page, but that no
longer worked well. Now I love being able to type in parts of pages, and I no
longer use bookmarks since I can just search my entire history. The only thing
missing is the ability to sync the history and awesome bar training to other
machines, which we're working on (
<http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/> ).

Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla :)

~~~
huhtenberg
Well, it may sound strange and counter-intuitive, but when I am typing
something in the address bar, I am _typing a URL_. Not _searching_ God knows
what in God knows where. I know that in FF3 I could be, but that's not what I
am used to. So all non-URL stuff that smartbar throws at me is just a noise
that I have to filter out.

As I said above - the transition logic for FF2/IE/etc users was not thought
through AT ALL.

Given it's a _smart_ bar, I expect it to be more flexible in its
configuration, so that I could adjust its smarts as needed. E.g. it could have
configurable weights that control how important a match in particular piece of
data is. This way I would've zero'ed the importance of everything, but the
matches at the head of the URL and happily went about my business without
ranting :)

Again, this sort of flexibility is not a hard thing to implement nor does it
pollute or burden the UI in any way. Why this or something similar didn't make
it into a production release is beyond me.

~~~
Tichy
I don't see your problem: you can still "just type your URL", can't you?

~~~
gambling8nt
His problem is that he has to go through a lot more effort because under FF2,
etc., he only had to type a few letters from the beginning of the URL in order
to get where he was going.

~~~
scw
This is still the case: typing in 'news.' will be recognized as a URL, and
only subdomains of 'news' will be matched.

~~~
jonknee
No it's not, it searches entire URLs, names, etc. So site.com/news will come
up as well. I found the "awesome bar" entirely un-awesome as well.

~~~
scw
No, it won't with the trailing '.' -- try it yourself, visit site.com/news and
then search for 'news.'

~~~
jonknee
But then you have to have the full domain, which is shitty. Defeats the
purpose of having it search at all.

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mileszs
As someone mentioned above, it learns your habits. It irritated me at first,
as any fairly major feature change would, but it is pretty awesome and useful.

When I find that I visit a site so often that I habitually key in the first
few characters, hit down, and hit enter, it is time to bookmark it and give it
a keyword (in a bookmark's properties). After doing so, (as an example) if I
go to the bar and type 'hn' and hit enter, it automatically takes me to
<http://news.ycombinator.com/>. I think using this feature would benefit you,
and maybe ease your hatred to mild distaste, and, just maybe, eventually
you'll even _like_ the Awesome Bar.

I wish you luck.

~~~
mark-t
When I find that I visit a site that often, I subscribe to the rss feed. I use
keywords for searches: / for google, m-w for merriam-webster, and so on.

~~~
mileszs
I use <http://yubnub.org> in the Firefox search bar for that. It has commands
for nearly every search you could imagine. I'm a bit of a command-line-geek,
so that likely factors into its appeal for me.

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mark-t
To be fair, there is an obvious benefit to being able to search titles and
bookmarks. I've been using the betas (and nightly builds) for quite some time,
and it's stopped getting in my way. I do believe that the default behaviors
were not thought through very well (strings at the beginning of a url should
have higher precedence than page titles), it does take up too much space, and
it takes too long to show up. It also tends to interfere with autofill.

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forsaken
I agree that when you start using it you hate it, but I've grown to love it.
It's one of those little learning curves, and you learn to start typing what
you mean instead of a cryptic URL. I think this is one of those things that
"normal" users will love because it matches how they think. And us techy folks
will learn to love it because it really does make more sense.

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s3graham
Completely agree, I can't stand it. That combined with the fact that (in the
Windows theme at least) the drop down on the back button is now in the wrong
place are two pretty random changes that are exceedingly irritating.

Without reading up on it, I'd guess the SmartBar is an attempt towards trying
to address the fact that "a lot of" [1] people don't distinguish or understand
the differences between the address bar, a search box in the chrome, and
whatever largish text box is at the top of their home page. That doesn't mean
I don't hate it though.

[1]
[http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/27/1160055...](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/27/1160055.aspx)

~~~
thorax
Be careful-- the next thing you know, in FF4, the smartbar will be the
"Google-as-you-type-suggestion-bar".

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bprater
Good points. I've been using FF3 since alphas and have gotten used to the
"smart bar". (I didn't even know it was called that until today.)

I tend to agree though. I'm still being driven nuts that Google's favicon has
changed. I think companies need to be sensitive to all the momentum that
people bring to their products.

But then you have to balance that with the overhead of supporting an "old"
feature for the sake of old users.

This might have been one of those things that might have worked better as an
add-on. I think it might have been kinda slick when you first fire up FF3 to
be presented with a choice of basic add-ons to play with, like "Smart Bar".

~~~
derefr
People only want to learn one thing. If there's a default way, and an optional
way, most people will use the default, so you'll be able to expect it and
learn it. If, however, everyone is forced to choose at the beginning (without
a default), there will be a pretty even distribution of people with and
without the feature enabled. In a case where this severely affects the
usability of the browser for those who aren't used to it (e.g. those who
expect to be able to use the beginnings of URLs in the smart bar and can't,
and, vice versa, those who expect to use keywords in the "old bar" and can't),
this causes problems.

For example, say you wanted to set up computers for public use at a school or
library. Which way is it better to set the option? If it were a default/option
pair, it would obviously be better to set it to the default, since people
would be more familiar with it. If, however, it were just two equally valid
options, which one would people be more likely to be familiar with? Multiply
this by every possible [add-on on/add-on off] pair, and you have, perhaps,
1000 or more default browser configurations, any of which are equally likely
to run into in the wild!

Anyway, on your first point, I think _users_ need to be a little more
sensitive to the fact that, if they don't allow themselves to be pushed out of
their comfort zone every once in a while, their experience using their
software (or anything for that matter) will never improve. If a feature worked
crappily, one would never know it until they adapt to the "new way" enough to
see how bad it was before. Until then, their comfort with the old way makes
them much too partial to be a good judge.

------
jsteele
A Firefox extension to turn off the AwesomeBar has been out since February.

Oldbar <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227>

~~~
Zev
That only makes it _look_ like FF2. It still uses the same annoying way of
guessing what URL you want.

~~~
axod
How is it annoying? Just unlearn the cryptic prefixes or urls, and type in
what you really want.

~~~
Zev
Well, starting to type "news" when i want "news.ycombinator.com" and getting
"reddit.com" or "digg.com" is kinda pointless. Unless you're suggesting that
URL's are obsolete?

~~~
axod
not at all, but why not start typing "yc..." or "redd" etc instead? Be
specific.

~~~
Zev
Maybe my line of thought where a URL that only one website can own is
outdated, but i thought that by typing the URL it would be more specific then,
say, going to google and typing in "news" and hoping to find hn.

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rob
I've gotten (semi)-used to it now, but I wonder why they did not make it an
option to switch between the new way and old way. Or at least, keep the
current "look" but have an option for it to behave the old way.

------
kobs

      --> about:config
      --> set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 0
    

This appears to work, but at the expense of removing the URLs you typed in the
address bar. So I guess your point is still valid.

Personally, I think the Awesome Bar is fantastic.

~~~
Zev
Not having any sort of URL defeats the purpose of having a history. There has
to be (and already is) an in between. It's what Firefox 2 and every other
browser has.

And according to my IRC conversation with someone on #firefox #
irc.mozilla.org earlier, Firefox 3.1 will have the option of having. They even
have the patches all ready. So why it's not in Firefox 3 is beyond me.

~~~
kobs
> Not having any sort of URL defeats the purpose of having a history. There
> has to be (and already is) an in between. It's what Firefox 2 and every
> other browser has.

Yeah, which is why that setting is pretty much useless. Also, when setting
that property to 0, it causes the screen to flicker intermittently when typing
in the address bar (at least on Mac OS X Tiger).

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safetytrick
I've never hand any of these problems, the awesome bar is brilliant. Sure I'm
not entirely sure where the sites I use all the time are but that is what
bookmarks and keywords are for. d for digg, s for slashdot, f for facebook.
The awesome bar is brilliant as a tool for finding search results you are
trying to get back to, you have search friendly URL's that are indexed
quickly, I can navigate my web app if I remember any part of the URI. This
will be a big call for search friendly URL's as identifying a page by the id
number just won't hack it when I'm looking for something by subject. This is
the biggest improvements from FF2 to FF3, just let it grow on you. The
aesthetics here are following the function, this URL is easy to read.

Brilliant.

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timcederman
Sometimes there needs to be a hard break to what you're used to if it is
simply a better interaction model. Firefox's smart bar is a definite
improvement, although it takes adjusting to (like the Office 2007 ribbon, and
the Vista start menu)

Not all of us want feature creep, and if we're doing something a crappy way,
then I don't mind if I sometimes get dragged kicking and screaming to a better
model. I eventually got used to opening my browser windows in tabs instead of
new windows. I got used to Gmail compared to Eudora. It's hard to satisfy
everyone, and if you can satisfy a lot _more_ people with a hard change that
upsets a few people, sometimes it is better.

I don't think the points you made are prerequisites for good UI design.

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philcrissman
I understand the reaction, but I have to echo the other commenters who say
they've "gotten used to it". This feature annoyed me for the first day or two
I used it. Then I began to expect this behavior, and actually began to use it.
Now I prefer it.

That's just me, though.

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quoderat
The awesome bar is less than awesome. Definitely sticking with FF2 here.

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Tichy
I think it is great. Bookmarks on FF always sucked really, really bad. With
the ability to search them on the fly, I am almost happy (it is a hard
problem, how to organize information).

Maybe it should be possible to disable it, but since I actually like it, I
don't care...

You know about the bookmark keywords, right? I have set news.yc to keyword yc
(in the properties of the bookmark), so when I type "yc", I go straight to
this site. Maybe that feature could alleviate your pain?

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ames
What annoys me the MOST about the smartbar is that it doesn't always work.
Example: I type in maps.google.com and hit enter. Nothing happens. I click the
little green arrow. Nothing happens. I edit to include the <http://> and still
nothing happens. I have to search for google maps in the search box to get to
the site. wtf?

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krschultz
Give it some time, I thought it strange at first but after a few days once it
learned what I wanted most of the time it became very useful.

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atourino
It takes some getting used to but once you wrap your brain around it and its
quirks it's VERY useful, to me at least. Of course YMMV.

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FiReaNG3L
It learns while you use it, so the sites you like (news.ycombinator,
news1130.com, etc) will get to the top the more you use them.

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nortexoid
the super-wicked bar is a respectable addition. it works like just the all-
hyped instant search technology (e.g. of google, copernic, etc.) by
(instantly) finding any url (which includes descriptions) containing the
relevant search phrase. it's super-wicked. and the greatest part is that it
learns!

i could see why someone might want to disable it, but i find it supremely
useful. i don't have to search through my history...the super-wicked bar does
it automatically for it. it's like my whole history is instant-searchable in
the url ("super-wicked") bar!

more and more software is continually making use of instant search technology
(e.g. application launchers like Launchy), and it's a great thing indeed.

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LysolPionex
I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU! When I'm typing a url, let me see URLS! If I want to
search, there is a search box immediately to the right. >_<

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mercury
wat i hate happen is when i type in "p" it automatically goes to pornhub! m
definitely not going to install ff3 in the computer down stairs.

~~~
ralph
Yes, someone on slashdot was complaining of this. He visited a pr0n site
daily. Fine. However, now there's a good chance that site will flick by, two
lines high, as he starts typing in the location bar before he gets too
specific. He doesn't want to wipe his whole history, but nor does he want it
appearing all the time. I can see his point. Just type `e' and the top match
isn't specific to the very vague `e' but may be embarassing.

