Where did I go wrong with Firefox? And a recommendation, please.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I upgraded to Windows 7 on Friday. I reinstalled Firefox, and installed the exact same add-ons (there were only four, so it wasn’t hard to make a list). Before, when I began typing something into the navigation bar, it would present a whole list of sites I’ve visited, but now it’s not doing that anymore.

For example, if I wanted to come here, I’d type “str” into the bar, and the first on the list would be the main link to the message boards, followed by the Straight Dope home page, followed after that by more specific locations on the boards that I’d visited. Now, if I type “str” all I get is the SD home page. I’ve tried manually typing the enitre URL to the SDMB manually, hoping it would “add in” as a suggestion, but it hasn’t.

It also used to suggest URLs by Site Title - an example being, if I typed “lol” into the bar, the first suggestion would be icanhascheezburger.com. Not anymore.

I can’t figure out where I went wrong here. I’ve poured over the options, but can’t find anything. My add-ons are ABP, Greasemonkey, Google Toolbar and “oldbar”. The last one only makes suggestions appear the way they used to in Firefox 2, with a single line, URL on the left and title on the right. It isn’t supposed to affect the functionality; it didn’t before, and if I disable it now I still don’t get my desired behavior. I only had one GM script running before, and now, and it’s tailored to a specific web site, so that can’t have anything to do with it. I’m stumped.

Oh, and as far as bookmarks - I tend to use them sparingly. I’ve always found it easier to type the first few characters into the nav bar, rather than sifting through a big list of bookmarks.

I’m also curious if anyone could suggest a free, simple weather program. I’ve always used The Weather Channel’s program, which displays the current temperature in the system tray, and clicking on it brings up a small screen where you can see more details, and select the 10-day forecast. Alas, it won’t install on my new 64-bit OS. I’ve googled on this, but all I’ve come up with are either gadgets (I don’t, and won’t, use the sidebar) or programs that cost.

2

It has nothing to do with your addons, you just blew away your history when you reinstalled your OS.

You’ll just have to browse the old-fashioned way for a little while until your favorite sites are in your history again.

3

Right, but I’ve already revisited many sites - including this one - a good 50 times. How much does it take?

I’m pretty sure that before, once was all it took, but I could be wrong about that.

4

Check Tools | Options | Privacy - is “Keep my history for at least X days” checked?

5

Yep.

I didn’t explain myself very well in the OP, so I’m going to try to clarify:

If I start typing “board” in the nav bar, the SDMB does pop up, as the first (and only) suggestion. If I type “str”, the SD home page pops up as the first and only suggestion.

So the history is there, it just isn’t being accessed the way it was before. It used to be that if I typed in “str” the SDMB would come up first (presumably because it is the suggestion I visit most often), followed by the home page, followed by a bunch of other URLs on either or both, which I never paid attention to.

I think before, Firefox was comparing what I typed as a substring against the URLs in its history, or going by the title, or both; I have no idea how it worked. Now, however, it seems to only be checking URLs from the left.

Does that make sense?

6

Is Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Location Bar set to ‘History and Bookmarks’?

Can’t help you with the weather gadget, I use the sidebar one in Windows 7 :slight_smile:

7

The one I use is a FF add-on; gives me current conditions and temperature; today’s projected high or tonight’s projected low, with symbol for forecast (clear, cloudy, raining); tomorrow’s projected high with symbol. Then you can click for radar, today’s forecast in detail, or a ten-day forecast.

8

It is, but that shouldn’t make a difference. To continue with my Straight Dope example, I’ve never had the home page or the SDMB bookmarked.

9

I suspect you just need to be patient.

10

I think the order of the suggestions is by frequency of vists. In other words, if you’re typing in “str”, which takes you to the home page, and then clicking through to the message board, you’re only exacerbating the problem by frequently visiting the home page first.

11

I don’t think this is it - unless you have to visit a site x number of times before it would show up as a suggestion. And I know that’s not right, because after visiting a site once, the site will show up as a suggestion as long as I type the first few letters of the URL.

I understand this. I don’t care about the order; I just want the SMDB to show up somewhere in the list when I type in “str”. Firefox used to do this, now it doesn’t.

Both URLs are in my history. But now I have to type the first few letters of the URL. Firefox used to show suggestions even if the string I typed was in the middle of the URL, or in the title of the web page.

Like with icanhascheezburger.com: it will only show up as a suggestion if I type in “ica”; it used to show up if I typed in “lol”, which isn’t even in the URL, but is in the title of the page.

12

i think that with the new data methods used it can vary. seems to have good and bad days. usually better after a new boot.

‘st’ will bring up this url and any url with ‘st’ anywhere with analysis of history. though first it does it with ‘s’ and doesn’t always seem to restart with the addition of additional letters. it might crank for most of a minute before accepting additonal letters or even the full url specifically.

it does seem that titles aren’t in the search anymore or aren’t done until after the whole url data.

13

I think that there’s an absolute lower limit on whether a history result appears in the bar. You have to visit a site X number of times before it even has a chance of showing up up there.

My suggestion would be to try to type the URL manually into the bar (as those get priority for some reason), and, if that’s not enough, keep doing that for a little while. It should get on the list unless your history table is completely borked.

If the latter is the case, you may get some help by “vacuuming” your database, or even completely deleting the files (mentioned in the comments in this article about vacuuming manually). Or even a complete reinstall (which is why you should keep a backup copy of your extensions.)

14

In case anyone else out there is having the same problem, I found the solution here.

In about:config, for some reason browser.urlbar.matchBehavior was set to 3, which matches only the beginning of URLs or page titles. I changed it to 2, “Use only word boundaries when searching for typed text in the Location Bar autocomplete”, and now it works as it did before I reinstalled.

I don’t remember having to do this before, so I assume the default behavior must have changed with the latest release of Firefox, but since I’d upgraded the last couple of times, my configuration went unchanged. Oh well, whatever; it works the way I want it to now, so I’m a happy camper.