I’d just like to mention a few things I like about how Firefox’s search works at the moment, things that I would miss sorely if they were not possible any more. Firefox’s better keyword search/quicksearch functionality is a major part of the reason why I use it over Chrome.

I have more than 20 quicksearch bookmarks, most of them dictionaries (note that one dictionary may have two or more search directions, hence the large number of quickseraches). I use more than of these 10 regularly.

Unlike Chrome, Firefox allows

1. manually editing the search URL, thus fine tuning the search options of the site

2. on the rare occasions when Firefox gets the encoding wrong when using the “Add a keyword for this search…” option, it is possible to correct is manually using &mozcharset= option (essential for me)

3. it allows adding more than one keyword for the same search (by means of multiple quicksearch bookmarks). This is very convenient when using a dictionary among languages with different scripts. Why switch keyboard layouts just to type the keyword, then switch back? Instead I have a keyword in each of the two scripts.

4. Quicksearches are simply stored as bookmarks, so they’re transferrable between profiles with relative ease.

Apart from quicksearches, I do use the search bar too, but I don’t usually switch search engines there. It’s just set to my main search engine all the time.

Please improve Firefox’s search in such a way that you don’t break these things. I tried using Chrome, and found that it’s simplified search model is infinitely less useful than Firefox’s, especially for consulting dictionaries. In Firefox I can customize quickseraches to work exactly as I want, and I can look up a word in less than a second using the keyboard.

Like “Eevee” above, I also ‘mash Ctrl-K’ whenever I want to search for something. Typically my Firefox usage for ‘getting places’ consists of hitting Ctrl-T, and then:
1. Typing a few letters into the AwesomeBar, and pressing Enter (thank you “Enter Selects”)
2. Pressing Ctrl-K, and then either searching (often with ‘suggestions’ and hitting Ctrl-Down-Arrow and picking another search engine, and then searching.

Personally, the ability to separate #1 & #2 above is a key reason I prefer Firefox to Chrome. I use AwesomeBar heavily, but also like search suggestions. However, I see absolutely no reason why my AwesomeBar queries should be sent off to Google, which they are with Omnibar in Chrome. If I’m searching, this makes perfect sense…if I’m looking for something on my intranet, it doesn’t.

I guess I could go to Google and type out “site:http://www.example.com” but I’m lazy.

We did a complete check on whether the plugins we ship fit the categorization and are the state of the web with 3.0, too. We haven’t done that since, because it’s a ton of work, but we left the communities with the clear message that changes can happen if there’s a case to be made. All those discussions are in bugzilla, fwiw.

If you’d like that thing to be more transparent, there can be tons of solutions. Starting from something as easy as to CC you on the bugs we file. Caveat, doing other systems in parallel hasn’t worked out so far, I’d much rather talk about how we handle things in bugzilla so that we can gather the data you’re looking for.

If you want another round of complete reviews, or a review of the categories, let’s talk about that.

As a simple example, imagine a search provider that did a google site: search for the current focused tab url.

I’d just like to mention a few things I like about how Firefox’s search works at the moment, things that I would miss sorely if they were not possible any more. Firefox’s better keyword search/quicksearch functionality is a major part of the reason why I use it over Chrome.

I have more than 20 quicksearch bookmarks, most of them dictionaries (note that one dictionary may have two or more search directions, hence the large number of quickseraches). I use more than of these 10 regularly.

Unlike Chrome, Firefox allows

1. manually editing the search URL, thus fine tuning the search options of the site

2. on the rare occasions when Firefox gets the encoding wrong when using the “Add a keyword for this search…” option, it is possible to correct is manually using &mozcharset= option (essential for me)

3. it allows adding more than one keyword for the same search (by means of multiple quicksearch bookmarks). This is very convenient when using a dictionary among languages with different scripts. Why switch keyboard layouts just to type the keyword, then switch back? Instead I have a keyword in each of the two scripts.

4. Quicksearches are simply stored as bookmarks, so they’re transferrable between profiles with relative ease.

Apart from quicksearches, I do use the search bar too, but I don’t usually switch search engines there. It’s just set to my main search engine all the time.

Please improve Firefox’s search in such a way that you don’t break these things. I tried using Chrome, and found that it’s simplified search model is infinitely less useful than Firefox’s, especially for consulting dictionaries. In Firefox I can customize quickseraches to work exactly as I want, and I can look up a word in less than a second using the keyboard.

Also it would be good to be able to access the search options right from firefox. Like google offers ability to confine searches to results from your country only but currently you can’t access that from browser.

The info-bar wouldn’t appear until something like the third or fifth visit. There must also be a “No thanks” alternative which makes it go away for ever on that site.