How can I get the URL bar to complete something like "cnn" to "http://www.cnn.com" regardless of whether CNN.com is in my history or bookmarks (instead of creating an unnecessary google search)?
I'd like to have "short" URLs expand to a best guess (i.e., if I simply type CNN in the location bar (aka not-so-awesome bar), I'd like that to expand to http://www.cnn.com, whether or not CNN is in my history or bookmarks. Instead, I get a rather slowly loading Google search, which may or may not have CNN as the top hit. At one point, shortly after FF4 was released, I found a pointer to the right thing to change in about:config to get this behavior back, but I'm not having any luck now.
All Replies (3)
Here's how to get the old behavior from Firefox 3:
- Go to the about:config page
- Search for the "keyword.URL" preference
- Double-click on the preference and enter a new value of http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
This will enable "browse by name" which will jump straight to the top search result for common searches.
Modified by Matt Brubeck
I don't think that was the default behavior. I have in my about:config a default prefix of "www." (browser.fixup.alternate.prefix) and a default suffix of ".com" (browser.fixup.alternate.suffix), and these used to be used to construct URLs. That's what I'd like to have happen again.
"Browse by name" was in fact the default setting in Firefox 3.6 and earlier. In most cases it does just what you're asking for; for example, if you type "cnn" then browse-by-name will take you straight to www.cnn.com. This add-on is another way to restore that setting, easier than the steps I gave in my previous response:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/browse-by-name/
Or if you just want the browser to add "www." and ".com" then you can press Command+Return after typing a word in the location bar.