Things you can't search for using adress bar search
Searching from adress bar works fine for me, with few exceptions. If I want to search for something with a dot ("foo.bar") or something that browser can mistake for IP adress ("27/3") it doesn't search and instead gives "Error - server not found" page. I'd love to have behavior smilar to Chrome's - if there is no server then try to search for it.
I searched for a while but couldn't find a way to resolve this. (about:config -> keyword.url is not the answer). Do you know if and how I can get it to work ?
All Replies (8)
Enclose the search term in quotes. That works.
If this kind of workaround would satisfy my, I would've been using search bar separate from adress bar.
The example you gave was foo.bar. Enclosing it in quotes worked for me. I got a Google page with results for foo.bar.
since the icann is currently in the process of liberalizing the top-level-domain space, firefox will have to treat input in the form of foo.bar as web address.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain#New_top-level_domains http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/about/program http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en
Allright, but I'm looking for something to mimic Chrome behavior - if server is not found it searches for it in google. Like if facebook servers go down, then chrome will redrirect you to "facebook.com" search results after typing "facebook.com" in adress bar.
And about quotes let me be clear - they are too much hassle to use. I want to configure something once not type quotes every time I search.
When I try foo.bar I get redirected to my DNS provider's results page. Assuming you get a true 404, perhaps you can redirect immediately to a Google search?
I looked for an add-on, but most present you a custom error page rather than searching automatically.
Example: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fierr/
Still, the extra click might be more convenient that the other workarounds until you find something automatic. (Or create one...)
You can use a (one letter) keyword search to ensure that Firefox does a search and doesn't threat the word as an URL.
You can either do that for existing search engines via the Manage Search Engines window or create a keyword bookmark.
Thanks guys. Thats still not exactly what I'm looking for, but i think its close enough. Looks like to get exactly what I need I will have to write my own ff extension.