For everyone asking what's wrong with Chrome's URL bar, here's one specific example I run into.

I go visit Google Analytics relative often. In Firefox, I can start typing analytics.. and it pulls up GA as an option very quickly. With chrome it never shows up at all, instead I have to start typing google, and it'll show up as the 3rd or 4th option.

It's hard to remember all the specific annoyances, but this is one of a handful where FF's awesome bar really outshines Chromes. Now I'm willing to make the tradeoff because Chrome on linux is still MUCH faster the FF.

I use Chrome instead of FF despite the address bar. Other annoyances:

- Address you enter disappears when you hit enter, doesn't reappear until the page loads. This is a problem if the page spins for a long time; it can be indistinguishable from a total failure.

- Type-ahead will occasionally find matches like "ha" -> "Hacker News" despite the address being "news.ycombinator.com" which is good, but... When you type the "c", that result will disappear! It's really unpredictable and that makes it hard to use.

- The status bar's "..." replacement can be good, but it occasionally elides the important part of an address, like "...blogspot.com/..." Not useful.

That said, Chrome is vastly more usable (on OS X) than FF just because of its speed and stability. I only use FF for Firebug now.

If you're on the dev channel, web inspector has improved immensely. It's seriously cut down on the amount of time I've had to spend in FF.

Great job pulling out some of the other annoyances. I've definitely been bitten by that one.

While both Chrome and FF's systems are probably better than it ever was, I still miss Galeon's old URL completion bar. It essentially behaved like tab completion in bash. So when you hit tab it completed out to the longest common match in your history. It was awesome for navigating to different parts of sites you visit often.

Chrome should really steal the heuristics that Quicksilver (http://github.com/tiennou/blacktree-alchemy) uses for its auto-completion. After just a few weeks of use, I reached the point where Quicksilver seemed to read my mind. If I type in the three or four most significant characters of what I'm looking for, it'll just show up.

I suspect this is either a product of what is familiar to individuals or of different browsers suiting different surfing styles.

For me FF never seems to pull up Google analytics for "analytics" but I only have to get to "anal"[1] before it appears as #1 in Chrome.

The algorithms probably train better for different people

1. There is probably some ironic joke in there somewhere :)

I suspect it's a matter of time, at least for Firefox if not for Chrome. Firefox's is mainly frequency based, so it needs a little while to train.

It took 2-3 weeks for FF's bar to really start to get awesome for me.

That's an interesting opposing view; because the thing that hooked me on Chrome was the address bar.

I can no longer function efficiently in other browsers because, for me anyway, it is so streamlined.

Same thing for me. The possibility to integrate search engines (or other forms) with a keyword is what keeps me in Chrome.

I have to agree though that FFs autocomplete feature is better. Chrome only seems to match addresses if you type their beginning.

Firefox has also had this feature for a while, right click > 'Add a Keyword for this Search' which is indispensable.

Not the same. Chrome automatically picks up every search engine you use.

I think we can all agree that Safari is the furthest behind in this regard. For a company that takes pride in stripping things down to the bare essentials, having an address bar and a search bar is becoming obnoxious.

I guess that's true. Personally I guess I never noticed because I have Quicksilver indexing my Safari history. I can also use it to do all my Web searches.

One small thing I like about Safari is that it understands addresses like nytimes/politics as nytimes.com/politics.

What don't you like about Chrome's address bar? It auto-completes as well, it will even auto-fill a URL for a site you've never been to before. Having search in the same box is usually faster for me, the only time I hit a snag is when I'm searching for something that can be confused with a URL.

I suppose it's all relative, but to me FireFox feels cumbersome in comparison to Chrome. I only open it up to test sites on.

I agree with you and I rate Firefox search bookmarks as an even bigger plus. Life is short and I don't want to waste it by having to go to a site such as wikipedia or a multi-lingual dictionary first and then search and wait for a second page to load.

I'm not sure how Chrome's treatment of custom search engines differs from Firefox's. In Chrome, you can associate a URL with a keyword so that when you type "keyword query" into the address bar, the %s parameter in the associated URL is replaced with your query. In what way is Firefox's better?

In Firefox, I can type any of the following into the awesome bar:

   "d victual"  -> looks up "victual"
   "j joust"    -> gets "joust" in a Japanese dictionary
   "wp Boron"   -> displays the wikipedia page "Boron"
   "hn patio11" -> displays HN comments of "patio11"

How can I do this in Chrome? Last time I checked, it wasn't possible. If it is now, then I might start using Chrome for more resource intensive flash games.

You can do the same in Chrome. Check under Options ("Basic" tab) > "Manage" next to Default Search. You should see a list of search engines. If you've already used the search engine and Chrome has picked it up, just select it from the list, "Edit", and customize what keyword you want to use (by default it uses the basic URL). If it's not there, "Add" to make a new one.

For example, for Wikipedia I use: Keyword: wp URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&...

Here's the Chrome help page about it: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95... It tells you to use Tab to search, but typing just the keyword and search term works fine (e.g. "wp Google" to look up Google on Wikipedia).

I see from your responses why I couldn't find that-- you're all talking about search engines! I wasn't thinking of HN or bi-lingual dictionaries as search engines and I never even considered managing search engine options rather than just adding a keyword to a bookmark (which Chrome won't let you do).

It's definitely a weird interface and a lot of menus to go through, but once it's set up, it's pretty much the same as FF's search bookmarks. Thanks.

Go into your search engine manager (via options or the omnibox's context menu) and edit the keywords for your chosen engine - note that we automatically add engines here with the keyword as the domain, so if you do a search on amazon.com, we'll automatically add amazon with the keyword 'amazon.com' - with autocomplete, this lets you type 'am', then press tab to search (or space-separate the keywork from the term).

This can also be done in Chrome, see other responses here. What Chrome also does is that it discovers searches by itself, so that when I type "im" and the autocomplete brings up imbd.com I can press tab, my search word and enter. There is no need to manually add the keywords.

What do you mean with the address bar? Chromes bar also has autocompletion. I even find it simpler to use. In Firefox, I have to press the down-key + enter to select a suggestion. In Chrome, I just have to press enter.

What do you think is missing otherwise in Chrome?

I think the overall user experience is probably much better compared to Firefox in nearly all aspects.

I concur with rottencupcakes, the FF "AwesomeBar" is still a bit more... awesome than Chrome's. It isn't just auto-url completion, it does a fair bit more completion and analysis to suggest what you're trying to type.

Other than the first suggestion, you have to use the down arrow in Chrome to use the completions. In Firefox, you cycle through them using tab just like completion in every other app (e.g, bash, ipython, anything using readline).

While I use Chrome as default, I too miss Firefox autocompletion.

In Firefox, I would just start typing "Hacker News" and HN would popup as a first suggestion after first letter, probably based on usage frequency.

The only way to get the same result in Chrome, is to start typing "news.ycombinator.com", which means you have to remember url, not the name. Chrome, will surely find by "Hacker News" too, but I will need to type in at least 5-6 characters for that.

That might be why I prefer Chrome's. I usually type URLs, only fall back to typing titles if I don't remember the URL, and it really annoys me how often Firefox will take me to the wrong site unless I type a fairly large prefix of the URL. In Chrome I can just type ne..., while in Firefox I have to go all the way to news.y... before it'll give me the right completion.

As far as I can tell, both browsers have basic learning algorithms that are supposed to predict better over time what site you want (in both Chrome and Firefox I can now just type 'n' to get to Hacker News).

However, even though I currently use Chrome as my primary browser, I think Firefox still gets this slightly better - I think it learned more quickly and accurately for me at least.

Huh, when I write "hac" the top suggestion in Chrome (well, Chromium daily) is HN.

They are for anyone using node.js.