The Mozilla Blog

A Little Something Awesome about Firefox 3

Posted by mary

April 21st, 2008 · Mozilla News, Tips & Tricks

Deb Richardson, author of the about:mozilla newsletter, wrote one of the better explanations I’ve seen on the “AwesomeBar,” Firefox 3’s revamped URL bar.   It’s not the most humble of names, but if you check out Deb’s post you’ll see why it’s earned it.

In Deb’s words, here’s a quick snapshot of what makes Firefox 3’s URL bar just so awesome:

Dubbed the “AwesomeBar”, it lets you use the URL field of your browser to do a keyword search of your history and bookmarks. No longer do you have to know the domain of the page you’re looking for — the AwesomeBar will match what you’re typing (even multiple words!) against the URLs, page titles, and tags in your bookmarks and history, returning results sorted by “frecency” (an algorithm combining frequency + recency).

Not only that, but the drop-list results show you the page’s favicon, the full title, the URL, and whether you have bookmarked and/or tagged the page in a richly formatted two-line display.

Example:  I start by typing “ginger”, and AwesomeBar searches through my history and bookmarks to return everything that matches that keyword, showing the first six and letting me scroll through the rest. You’ll notice here that several of the results are bookmarked (blue star icon on the right), and tagged (tag icon). The sites’ favicons are displayed on the left, making it really easy to scan through the results if you know what site you’re looking for in particular.

Check out Deb’s post for more on the AwesomeBar and check back here for more on the cool things to expect in Firefox 3!

| Trackbacks (6)

6 Responses to “A Little Something Awesome about Firefox 3”

1. 1

   Pingback from A Little Something Awesome about Firefox 3

   [...] Epicenter - Wired Blogs wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]

   Added on April 21st, 2008 at 9:34 pm

2. 2

   Pingback from The Awesome Bar Excites Me! | Firefox Facts

   [...] I’ve been doing some additional reading this morning about Firefox’s address bar - which seems to be slowly converting over in the minds of the public to being renamed the awesome bar. [...]

   Added on April 23rd, 2008 at 4:24 am

3. 3

   Pingback from Pages tagged "awesome"

   [...] tagged awesomeOwn a Wordpress blog? Make monetization easier with the WP Affiliate Pro plugin. A Little Something Awesome about Firefox 3 saved by 2 others     kilikafinal bookmarked on 04/25/08 | [...]

   Added on April 25th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

4. 4

   Pingback from Mitchell’s Web2.0 Talk « DougT’s Blog

   [...] her usage of Firefox on the desktop. She routinely searches for “wheat free”, and the Awesome Bar searches her own history and bookmarks (as apposed to searching the web). Her need when she is [...]

   Added on April 25th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

5. 5

   Pingback from New Word - Frecency « DanielSmithDesigns Weblog

   [...] heard of ‘frecency” before? Neither had I until I visited The Mozilla Blog and read http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/04/21/a-little-something-awesome-about-firefox-3/. It’s a combination of the words ‘frequency’ and ‘recency’ and refers [...]

   Added on May 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 am

6. 6

   Pingback from favicon display

   [...] newsletter, wrote one of the better explanations I??ve seen on the ???AwesomeBar,??? Firefox 3??http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/04/21/a-little-something-awesome-about-firefox-3/Make a Animated Favicon / Scrolling Text For Your WebsiteAnimated Favicon: Now for the first time [...]

   Added on May 13th, 2008 at 5:12 pm