Firefox

Access Address Bar Without It Being Selected

Written by Kevin

The Simplify Awesome Bar is a Firefox extension that allows you to access the your address bar without having to even select it. As long as you are not currently in an active input field (a form field on a web page, or the search bar within your browser window) then anything that you type will go directly into the address bar. This extension, in my opinion, lives up to its name!

The bar’s job is simple but enormously useful for anyone who doesn’t want to select the address bar every time they want to navigate to a new page. Another ‘awesome’ feature of the bar is when you select text on a page and then hit the space bar, your selected text will be sent directly to your address bar. Let’s say you are researching a topic and find a word or phrase you want to investigate further, you can select the word or phrase within the page and hit the space bar. Doing this will send the selected text to the address bar, you can then add more text to it or hit enter and begin your search.

As you can see in the screenshot below, Simplify Awesome Bar also will search your currently opened tabs for the word or phrase you are typing into the address bar, then gives you the option to switch to that tab instead of doing a search. This is a nice method for fast tab switching.

One thing I would like to see in this extension in the future would be the option to open your search into a new tab rather then the one you’re currently in. Many times I want to keep the current tab open while I do another search. Another negative to this extension is that it will not work on a Google search page.

Any and all text you type within a Google search page will go into the google search field at the top of the page, it’s just the way Google has their search page coded.

The Simplify Awesome Bar is currently a free extension available here.

 

About the author

Kevin

Kevin is the Founder and Senior Editor of Tech Heavy. When he isn't writing about the latest tech tools he spends his days working in an IT department in Dubuque, IA. @kevincray

3 Comments

  • That address bar is just simply awesome. 😉 I’m going to download it and try it out now.

  • I guess somehow it will come for all browsers even if it is not available now.