Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Addressbar: Difference between revisions

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{{FeatureBrainstorming}}
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<table class="fullwidth-table">
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<tr><th>Specific features</th>
<tr><th>Specific features</th>

Revision as of 01:34, 23 October 2006

« Firefox/Feature Brainstorming

Specific features References
Default URL for empty Tab

When opening a new "empty" Tab (via File->New_Tab or Ctrl-T), have the address bar default to the URL of the previous tab (in a selected state). Typing a new URL would delete the default URL (essentially keeping the current functionality), but pressing <return> would open the default URL (essentially creating a copy of the previous Tab).

n/a

Showing non-latin characters in address bar

When nonlatin characters are used in address they are urlencoded. Many sites use them. Wikipedia is an example. But URL shown in an addressbar gets totally unreadable, like this one (see the title not the status bar).

Such URL is not an easy thing write down on paper for example. It would be nice if such URLs were shown more like this (the non-latin part could be highlighted or formatted to prevent phishing): http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Вікіпедія

n/a

Auto-paging
  • When a numeric portion of the URL in the address bar is highlighted, allow it to be incremented/decremented using the mouse wheel, PgUp/PgDn, scroll arrows, or some other method. E.g., photo1.jpg; highlight '1' and scroll to view photo2.jpg, etc.

n/a

Search
  • When typing in the URL bar, have an option in the auto-complete menu to search for the entered text at the user's choice of Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc. Note: this feature already exists in the Mozilla SeaMonkey browser. If the code is compatible it could just be copied.

OR

  • Merge functionality of location bar and search bar: When typing in the URL, show both autocomplete and google suggestions (preferrably google suggestions first. Explanation: this helps a lot newbie users; also a lot of users tend to use the drop-down button to go to previously visited urls instead of using the autocomplete feature). Something like this (well not just like that, i just hidden the location bar and moved the search bar in place): http://tinyurl.com/yl24y3

n/a

Autocomplete
  • middle of word
  • local filenames
  • user's bookmarks
  • using history frequency for relevance
  • Further refinement (and strengthening of match) could be made by offering a list of likely alternatives, selectable via arrow keys in a drop-down menu
  • using addresses for which a password is known, or are otherwise marked as 'trusted' (marked as allow script, allow cookie, allow xpi install, etc)
  • all of above make autocomplete still useful after clearing private data or migrating from IE
  • Make autocomplete function more like a shell's tab completion in that it matches the longest common substring. See Bug #109758

- Similar to AppRocket on Windows and Quicksilver for OS X
- remarks from bur
- Autocomplete Manager extension provides some of this

Autocorrection
  • Allow to correct automatically badly entered top level domains (ex: .xom instead of .com or .comù instead of .com) ;
  • Allow to correct automatically badly entered sub domains (ex: xxx. instead of www. or wwww. instead of www.) ;
  • Allow to correct automatically recurrent typed adresses (ex: www.goiogle.com instead of www.google.com, www.imedia.biz instead of www.imedias.biz or www.youtube.net instead of www.youtube.com) by looking in the favorites and history ;
  • Allow to transcode addresses entered incorrectly in different keyboard layout (e.g. Cyrillic цццюьщяшддфющкп to www.mozilla.org) ;

n/a

provide basic site navigation from address bar

When I use news aggregation sites like slashdot and digg that provide deep links to stories on other sites, I invariably find myself wanting to look at the home page or perhaps even parent of the current URL.
It would be a very useful feature to provide hotkeys that manipulate the URL in the addressbar. At least 2 operations spring to mind:

  • get server URL
  • get parent URL
  • See Link Widgets
    • ...works best with Status Buttons 1.0, basic site navigation buttons could be placed on the status line this way, so it's no longer «just taking away screen space» as the above fellow said.
Selective Autohide of Menus, Address, Bookmarks, Extensions

I'd like to be able to set my menubars, bookmark bar, and (as an example) the Google toolbar to autohide. By this, I mean like the windows taskbar. This way I would be able to use that extra space for viewing, but wouldn't have to turn the bars on and off manually, or switch from the fullscreen mode.

This idea could present a problem with being able to trigger the right bar for display, but I think if someone worked out the UI specifics for that, it would be a neat feature.

 
Contextual menu

On right click, adding also a "paste & go" item

Like in Opera browser
- Middle click already does this if you turn it on (and it's on by default on Linux)

bug 216667

Location Bar should sort based on order visited

All major browser order the entries of the location bar based on last visited.
Example: if I type "yahoo.com", then "google.com", the order is:
google.com
yahoo.com
If I then type "yahoo.com" again, the order is:
yahoo.com
google.com

The order also changes if I open the location bar and select an entry with the mouse.

Sorting this way worked in early releases of Firefox 0.9.X. There is a bug filed in bugzilla for which the fixing is postphoned from one release to the other. Please make sure that it is included in Firefox 2.5, 3.0 or whatever it is.

bug 258107

Keybindings
  • Ability to customise what happens when ctrl-enter is pressed (command-enter for Macs) in the address bar and search bar. Some users want ctrl-enter to open a new tab. This will make the "ctrl == new tab" concept more pervasive. Currently, control-clicking on a link in a web page causes it to open a new tab. Also, most tabbed browsers open up a new tab upon ctrl-enter anyway, including older versions of Firefox itself. Whatever the default setting may be, it would be nice if the user could configure this. Also, some users want ctrl-enter behave just like plain enter. These users usually wanted to type ctr-v, enter, but accidentally held ctrl down too long, hence it gets registered ast ctrl-v, ctrl-enter.
  • Also, same thing goes for option-enter (alt-enter(?) on Windows). The "option == download url" concept has existed in older versions of Firefox as well as other tabbed browsers. While option-click still allows download of links, it's hard to remember what the keybinding is for downloading from the url bar anymore since there is no longer a consistent concept behind it and not compatible with other browsers.
 
Allow AJAX/frames-based sites to change location URL

A problem with Frames-based and DHTML / AJAX sites is that the page contents displayed can change but the location URL remains static, which impacts on the user's ability to bookmark page contents.

For security reasons (e.g. to prevent phishing) it is not possible from Javascript code to change the location URL displayed in the browser (except perhaps to add a "#" value, which is of limited use).

I propose that it should be possible to change the URL in other LIMITED ways, e.g.:

To any other URL with the *same* domain AND/OR To change the querystring

This could of course be configurable in the browser's Options, but one or both should be enabled by default, to allow web developers to make use of this feature to improve the user experience for most Firefox users.

  • However, WikiMapia does not seem to be handicapped by being limited to just the «#» part. Look.
General tasks
  • Keybindings: When the cursor is active and in the address bar <UP> will move the cursor to the start of the address string, and <DOWN> will move the cursor to the end of the string.
  • Multi-line paste of URLs: When pasting a multi-line URL - such as when one copies a large URL from a text-only shell-based e-mail program - Firefox should automatically strip line breaks and elide what is pasted as a single line URL.

n/a