August 11, 2012

Use address bar as the search bar too. Or not?


What do you think is better way: to use address bar as the search bar (like in Chromium/Chrome) or 2 bars - first as address bar, second - as search bar (like in Firefox)?

Both of variants have their advantages. When you using Firefox you can quickly use several search systems and quickly to switch between them. 

Firefox window
Pic.1: Firefox has 2 bars by default and you can use them simultaneously







Also you can use Firefox in "mixed" mode, when address bar works also as search bar - you can use 2 different search systems very quickly: for example,  Google/Yandex and Wikipedia.

Pic.2: Chromium has "lighter" interface than Firefox



Chromium does not suggest such freedom of choice, but you will see a much "lighter" interface than in Firefox. It signifies, that you will be saved to see many "information noise" (that is not needed for you 90% of time). Also you can see a much more long address line in the bar (that will be interesting for web-developers). If you are using several search systems, you will can use them and there - just add second (and each other) search system to the bookmarks. Anyway, you should to do one click (or press a "hotkey") as minimum to use it in both variants.

Thus both of variants are not ideal, and each of them has their own advantages. Which variant do you prefer?


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6 коммент. :

What about both or neither ?
Why don't let the enduser to configure it as he want?

There is a while that I use "Omnibar" add-on in Firefox to merge location bar and search bar into one

So for me, the better way is to use address bar as the search bar

> Why don't let the enduser to configure it as he want?

You can do this for Firefox now, but nobody do this in practice. Anyway, it will be interesting to see the results.

I'm using opera, it might be closed , but as features and freedom of choice in configurations it has no rivals.

I prefer single input, and I always setup Firefox to single line. And I can use shortcuts for search engines easilly, for both Chromium and Firefox. For example, "gg smth" will google something, while "wr smth" will use russian wikipedia search.

Useful.

As for me, Opera approach is the most useful. If input text is not an URL it's being searched by the default search engine (customizable), or you can prefix it with a shortcut to specify search engine explicitly (like "g" for Google, "y" for Yandex, etc. - all fully configurable and easily extendable).

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