Firefox address bar aka awesome bar starts to show suggestions in a drop down menu when you start typing, you can then select any URL by using mouse pointer or with the up/down arrow keys. Firefox had “browser.urlbar.autoFill” preference which is turned off by default for ages now, Mozilla decided to turn on by default for Firefox 14 Beta, which we’ve covered recently.
Improved Autocomplete Predictions Comes to Gmail Search
This feature fills URL automatically in the address bar when you type, however best match found by awesome bar may not be what you’re wanting to visit that’s one downside. Another downside is of this feature when compared to Chrome’s Omni box is instead of showing the full page URL of most visited site it only fills website URL, for example, when you’ve visited “ http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/release-preview” in the past it now fills “Windows.Microsoft.com/” only when you type “win” however you can select the full URL from dropdown also.
Google Scribe Provides AutoComplete Suggestions as you Type
Here Firefox stopping its Autocomplete of URL at URL fragment separator i.e. at ‘Windows.Microsoft.com/“ while Chrome autocompletes the full URL for you. Though with this feature in place you can also select a URL from suggestions in the drop down, in case if you don’t find this feature useful, you can disable it here is how.
Disabling Firefox’s Awesome bar URL Autocomplete feature
1. Type about:config in the address bar and press enter.
2. Find “browser.urlbar.autoFill” preference and set its value to “False”.
