Your browser’s command line
Once upon a time, the de facto computer interface was the command line. A prompt with a cursor, and incredible power to take you where you want to go with a few keystrokes. GUIs evolved to get you where you were going more easily, but the Linux world realized how productive command lines can be, and bash still brings many geeks joy to this day. The important realization was that for a command line to be productive, it has to have a lot of awesomeness mixed in. Shortcuts like ~, -, .., and things like tab completion take an archaic command line and make it awesome.
The same thing has happened on the web. At first browsers just had a command line, waiting for you to type http://www.mit.edu/. Over time, mouse-oriented navigation became more popular with users. Still, the original command line approach had a lot of potential, it just needed some more awesome.
The first attempt at an awesome command line was “Autocomplete”, which guessed what URL you were typing based on simple prefix matching. Of course this only works if you know the exact URL you want, and once you’ve typed enough to uniquely identify it. The reality is that a lot of users want to search, not type long URLs.
Firefox 2 added better searches to its command line. By default, if you type in a search term instead of a URL, it acts as an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. The location bar input “ruby” is a great example of why this is awesome. In Safari, “ruby” goes to Kay Jewelers, via ruby.com. In Firefox, it goes to the Ruby language website, via Google. Which did you probably want? On top of that, you can easily set up macros called “keyword searches”1. I’ve set up Firefox to accept “wp Antipode” as going directly to the wikipedia article on Antipodes, for example.
In the upcoming Firefox 3, your browser’s command line finally reaches awesomeness. They even call it the “AwesomeBar”. As you type, it uses a smart index of your bookmarks and history to give you what you’re looking for. It uses titles, URLs, visit frequency, visit recency, and learns from what you click on. It puts your computer to work for you, like Quicksilver and Spotlight. In short, it’s friggin’ awesome. With these features, the command line of Firefox 3 makes navigation so much faster and easier, it changes the way I browse.
Meanwhile, Wired’s Paul Adams, and some in the community, are trying to label this as a misfeature. He doesn’t like that the first time you type “wir” you might get history results from thewire.co.uk as well as wired.com, until you click on wired.com and it learns for next time. He says, “it breaks a major commandment of interface design: don’t radically change the behavior of something everyone’s used to”2. I say, suck it up and enjoy the awesomeness.
- This is very easy to do. You right-click on a search field, choose “Add a keyword for this search”, type a brief keyword, and voila. [↩]
- This has truth to it. The real commandment is, do not underestimate the high cost of changing the behaviour of something everyone’s used to. Make sure if you do so, it’s awesome. If Apple followed his version, we’d have no iPod touch or Mac OS X. [↩]
Mar 23 2008
8:47 pm
This is one of the things I hated the most about Firefox 3, actually — how completely unpredictably the URL bar behaved.
If I want to do a google search instead of typing an URL, I’ll type my query into the Google bar instead of the URL bar. And if I want Quicksilver-like behavior, well, I can use Quicksilver.
It’s not that I’m opposed to new interface ideas. I loved the Google bar when I first saw it in Phoenix, and I love the banner for remembering passwords. It’s that I’m opposed to new interface ideas that get in my way more than they help me.
(And I hate Firefox’s search, which draws the eye to the search field rather than the content. It’s all about the content, baby.)
Mar 23 2008
9:28 pm
I can understand some people caring about the I’m Feeling Lucky keywords in the location bar, but how does it get in your way? What destinations do you visit that .com completion (as per Safari) would be give you a better result than sending you to the first result on Google?
Quicksilver was great for finding files and launching apps (I just use Spotlight now that it’s fast enough as of 10.5), but what instant URL-and-title search functionality does it have? Is there a plugin for this that works better than the Firefox one?
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12:24 am
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Mar 24 2008
5:49 pm
Ctrl+L…
My good friend Allen over at antipode has recently decided to say a few words about the new Firefox 3 address bar.
I, for one, agree with him. I love it, and have gone to relatively great lengths to keep it.
An obvious rebuttal to the nay-sayers is tha…
Mar 24 2008
10:11 pm
Yang’s blog post above (#4) makes the excellent point that knowing the Control-L (or Apple-L as it would be for me) shortcut for the location bar makes it even easier to use.
Mar 24 2008
11:48 pm
Simple enough answer: I’m suddenly searching multiple namespaces as I type, instead of a single one. If I type Ruby, it’s because I want http://www.ruby.com. (Granted, I wouldn’t; it’s a bad example.) If I want a good site on the topic of Ruby, I type Ruby into the Google bar instead. I know what I’m looking for, you see.
Places is great if you’re typing and expecting the browser to wave a magic wand and come up with something that matches. That’s not what I’m expecting, though; I’m expecting URL autocompletion. Anything other than that is undesired.
Mar 25 2008
12:31 am
I think you overestimate how many users think in terms of URLs. I’ve observed a lot of non-techies who barely notice their existence. You don’t want http://www.ruby.com – virtually nobody does. A lot of people want the canonical Ruby homepage though.
Naturally you’d use the Google box if you wanted to browse sites about Ruby – the location bar is only for if you already know where you want to go.
Mar 25 2008
7:55 am
On the contrary, I make no attempts to estimate how many users want URL based auto-completion. I only say that’s how I want the location bar to work. If I want to do a search, I’ll do a search.
There are times it’s alright to search two namespaces at once, but after using it for a few weeks I really don’t think this is one of them.
Mar 25 2008
10:45 am
To elaborate on my last comment a little, those who says “The location bar should do a search, too!” are those who are trying to estimate how many users want to use it that way. A good interface adapts to its users, but a great interface adapts to its users in a natural and predictable way.
Mar 25 2008
10:45 am
By the way, your server’s clock is off.
Mar 26 2008
3:51 pm
I completely agree with this post. Firefox 3′s title bar is awesome. There is one small problem that I hope they fix before the release though:
The new bar previews when typing in an address are much taller than in FF2. This makes them drop down quite a bit farther into the middle of the window, where I normally have my cursor resting. When I start typing -L, “g”, , , to try and get to google, it instead tabs down the list to whatever my mouse cursor happened to be hovering over. This has been driving me nuts ever since I started using the beta.
Mar 26 2008
3:53 pm
whoops, I should have known better than to use angle brackets. I meant control-L, “g”, tab, enter.
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