Zatera Ul

I was dragging my feet for a while just on general principles (mainly the “No, I don’t want to upgrade when I’m in the middle of doing something else!” principle), but I finally upgraded to Firefox 3. And within two minutes I had joined the group of users that hates, hates, hates the so-called Awesome Bar. Most of the time, when I’m typing in the location bar, I’m typing the first couple of letters in a url. I don’t need or want to see EVERY web site that I’ve visited lately that contains those two or three letters in its url or title. There’s a Google toolbar for searches like that. Nor do I want or need web page titles displayed on separate lines in the search results for sites I visit every day–that’s just clutter.

Supposedly the algorithm will learn over a few days which sites you visit most. Sounds to me like they’re trying to make it too smart. In my former workplace, we recognized that the most important feature to build into automation that is meant to do the thinking for you was THE OPTION TO TURN IT OFF. Or at least to let the user say, “No, that’s not what I want. Shut up and get out of my way.”

A Firefox plug-in to restore most of the old look and functionality is here. This brings back the old look and behavior enough that I can begin to appreciate the added capability of being able to type and search within the location bar.