Google search box - why so small?

Discussion of features in Mozilla Firefox
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SpiderJon
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Joined: November 27th, 2003, 2:38 am

Google search box - why so small?

Post by SpiderJon »

Why is Google search box - at top-right of browser - so incredibly small? (It's just 16 chars).

It doesn't seem to be resizable, and you can't move it to a toolbar of its own below the address box.

As a result it's next to useless, which is a pity.
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croketephji
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Post by croketephji »

http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html ... rchbarsize
You can edit you userchrome to make it wider.
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SpiderJon
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Post by SpiderJon »

Excellent - thanks croketephji.
brianiac
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Post by brianiac »

"Next to useless" seems a pretty strong reaction. What the heck are you trying to enter?
Try using keywords, so you can enter "g abnormally long search string that I must see in its entirety" in the address bar.
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SpiderJon
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Post by SpiderJon »

brianiac wrote:"Next to useless" seems a pretty strong reaction. What the heck are you trying to enter?
Try using keywords, so you can enter "g abnormally long search string that I must see in its entirety" in the address bar.
What I want to enter depends on what I'm searching for. But one or at most two words is not enough when you're trying to focus a search on something specific.

Using the address bar isn't a bad idea - having it serve dual-purpose is okay - but since they've gone to the trouble of having a dedicated search box, it may as well be user-configurable w/o having to edit config files (I'm fine with doing that, but I suspect a lot of users are not).
crlorentzen
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Post by crlorentzen »

I agree with SpiderJon I think I like the design Mozilla Suite uses where the address bar is also the search. Howevr I also like Firefox in the fact that I can have multiple seach engines...
Firefox: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2b5) Gecko/20091204 Firefox/3.6b5
Thunderbird: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7pre) Gecko/20091221 Lightning/1.0b2pre Shredder/3.0.1pre
gonz
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Post by gonz »

Hi SpiderJon

The page listed below tells you how to change the address bar query in Firefox to a standard google search from an I'm feeling lucky search, once this is done you can hit Customize & remove the search bar completely, freeing up screen space & giving you a very large box to do searches with.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showpos ... ostcount=1
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0
metro
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Joined: June 19th, 2004, 10:01 am

Post by metro »

It is interesting as when I first started using this two box approch with one being for search I hated it as I thought they sould have justa as easily put it in the same space with a drop down to choose you engine etc. But now I rather like it as what ever you enter says there so whil on one page you can enter your search term or phrase then just do a CTRL-T and it stays the for your new tab.
sanssome
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Joined: June 18th, 2004, 10:21 pm

Post by sanssome »

Check out the Google toolbar extension as well. You lose a little real estate devoted to the extra toolbar, but you gain a resizeble search box, search history, and direct access to google search features.

You'll find a link to the google toolbar on the Firefox extensions page.
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SpiderJon
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Post by SpiderJon »

Gonz wrote:Hi SpiderJon

The page listed below tells you how to change the address bar query in Firefox to a standard google search from an I'm feeling lucky search, once this is done you can hit Customize & remove the search bar completely, freeing up screen space & giving you a very large box to do searches with.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showpos ... ostcount=1


Thanks Gonz - may well try this, although having resized the Search box has already made it as lot more usable for me.

SJ
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peter.reisio
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Post by peter.reisio »

Gonz wrote:Hi SpiderJon

The page listed below tells you how to change the address bar query in Firefox to a standard google search from an I'm feeling lucky search, once this is done you can hit Customize & remove the search bar completely, freeing up screen space & giving you a very large box to do searches with.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showpos ... ostcount=1

last I checked, however, doing it this way does not allow searching say like this "css site:w3schools.com"
instead of searching it will try to find that site - which of course doesn't exist

what I personally use is a google search bookmarklet
Firefox 0.9 comes with one pre-installed

you just want a bookmark for "http://www.google.com/search?&q=%s&sourceid=firefox"
mine has the keyword "?"

so whenever I want to google search, I just hit CTRL+L (to go to location bar) then type "? whatever" and I can still use "? whatever site:mozilla.org"

without the ? and no TLD, it'll still default to google's I'm feeling lucky

you can also use this for things like dictionary search (which also comes pre-installed)
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