Comments on: Hack to Modify Firefox 3 Address Bar to Return Search Results When Query or Invalid URL Is Entered

By: NetPhilospher

NetPhilospher — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:57:06 +0000

I love this!

I changed mine to feeling lucky because I SOMETIMES forgot to put .COM on things.

Now it saves time!
*types ‘mydigitallife’ into address bar*
WORKS!

– Connor

By: Walter

Walter — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:52:25 +0000

I have firefox 3.0, dual boot Xubuntu/Ubuntu 8.04LTS-AMD64, Dual Core AMD processor, 2 gigs of ddr2, 2X 1GB nVidia (SLi), and Antec 850 power supply.

Screwed up my browser trying to fix a Mediacom Searchassist issue. (note: Problem solved by going to bottom of searchassist mediacom page and clicking opt out. Duh.)

However, prior to finding that link I searched http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm for a hack to get me going and found your page and later another. You were correct about all of your data with respect to my cooler, except one. As a fellow techy, I felt it only fair to inform you of the issue so you could possible update your fix to include this info. It very well may be that my solution is distro dependent, but somehow I doubt it.

You instructed thus:

“By default, the string value for “keyword.url” is “about:neterror?e=query&u=”. To display search results instead, replace the string with one of the following search statements, depending on the search engine you prefer”

I attempted to make my browser go back to the “I’m feeling lucky” solution from google that I was used to. However, I never read the original string. I attempted to put in the string from your post, that was as you claimed, the default and I got nothing. However this string:

http://www.google.co.in/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=

which put me back to normal.

Sorry for the long post. I like to be detailed and specific.

Thanx for your help

By: LukeCro

LukeCro — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:12:48 +0000

Thank you! Ever since I switched to Firefox 3.5 I’ve been having all sorts of problems with Firefox — including the “Awesome Bar” Location Bar no longer working as a Google-search field… Following your directions on replacing about:neterror?e=query&u= with http://www.google.com/search?q= did the trick . . . Now the Location Bar still has all of it’s Awesome functionality, plus I can use it run Google searches like I was used to. Perfect! Now if only Firefox 3.5 stopped intermittently slowing down and freezing I might finally start to like it even more than the far more stable Firefox 3.1

By: Mateus

Mateus — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:32:20 +0000

O meu ja troquei isso tudo , mas ele continua pesquisando pelo Browser pelo Yahoo , sabe o que pode ser ?
Abraços Obrigado

By: vinpao

vinpao — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:24:47 +0000

Changing the keyword.URL field in Firefox might not work.
Firefox 3.5 was still defaulting to Yahoo as the search engine for the address bar.
I run REGEDIT and searched for “yahoo”: I found 4 entries like WS_FF_AB and WS_IE_AB all set to some yahoo pages.
I deleted them and now the default search depends on the keyword.URL field in about:config

also, check out
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_search
for different settings of the keyword.URL value.

By: Maggy

Maggy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:27:31 +0000

Thanks, OpenDNS changed this option without asking me and I couldn’t find a way back to default behavior.