For the time being, until someone makes an extension that changes the behavior of the URL bar, if that is even within the scope of what extensions can do, I am not aware of any way to change the behavior.

MacBook OSx 10.6.4

What I cannot figure out is why autocompletion works only with URL (actually only the beginning of it…) and not the name you saved it in your bookmark library …

If you saved Scott’s penguin site into a “Penguin” bookmark, it is useless unless you make a search in your bookmark library …

So why using a name to save those address ? IE was already recognizing those ten years ago!

Or if there’s a trick I missed in Safari4, please let me know.
cheers!

For example say you came across a great article on penguins and a few days later you want to prove a point to someone else (OK another contrived example, but bear with me!) The URL for the web page is http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildlife/penguins/index.shtml

Now the only part of that URL you are likely to remember is the word penguin, and almost certainly not arcticconnection.com

So treating URL autocompletion as a keyword search on your URL history and bookmarks may not be screamingly obvious, but incredibly useful just the same. Relevancy can be increased by multiplying the score by the number of times you’ve visited the page in the last month or so.

It’s one of those things that once you start using it you wonder how you ever got by without it. In fact I’ve almost stopped using bookmarks on Firefox altogether because every page I visit regularly is in my history and at the top of the list, and pages I almost never visit I just search for.

This is probably a dead thread, but I was wondering if there is a plugin or something for Safari that will do smarter URL autocompletion like Firefox does? By that I mean autocompletion of the URL based on the typed phrase existing anywhere in the URL (and I think page title as well), not just the first part of the domain name?

I would take a look at Safari 4 Beta, it apparently has a much redesigned URL completion mechanism. It may not be just like FireFox, though you should give it a look and see if it will work for you.

For example, I would like to type “phpm” and have it select “http://localhost/phpMyAdmin”. At the moment I get nothing, and have to type “local” to get it to find “http://localhost” first.

It is sort of my opinion this is a bit of an abuse of the URL bar to expect this. This is a pretty narrow case which would not be of much value to many others.

I can offer some suggestions.

1) Create a bookmarklet, put it as the first item, then you can get to that url with a command-1

2) Drag and drop the url to your desktop to save it as a .webloc file. You can then use any number of tools to bind it to a keyboard shortcut, such as control-P. FastScritps will do this and has a free version.

3) Set up your /etc/hosts file so that the hostname is ‘phpm’. You will have to add in some Apache config changes to make it all happen, but then you can get to your url with http://phpm/

4) Probably the best thing to do is just install something like LuanchBar, which I have recently fell in love with. I can get to google by typing “g”, If you wanted to get to your site with the phpm it would learn that. But it does more, and allows the same short keys to be used to get to files, folders, apps, and pretty much anything you can imagine.

Treating the URL bar like a bookmark/history search autocomplete would make it much more functional. In fact the only reason I use Safari as my main browser at the moment is because the combination of Firefox and Gmail maxes out my CPU and sends my laptop fans into leaf-blower mode. If it wasn’t for that I’d just use Firefox and be done with it

I would look at Safari 4 beta, the URL auto complete system is entirely reworked, so much that it is a talking point for their data pages at apple.com. If Firefix is maxing out your CPU on gmail, something is wrong, you should try to solve it.

For example, I would like to type “phpm” and have it select “http://localhost/phpMyAdmin”. At the moment I get nothing, and have to type “local” to get it to find “http://localhost” first.

Treating the URL bar like a bookmark/history search autocomplete would make it much more functional. In fact the only reason I use Safari as my main browser at the moment is because the combination of Firefox and Gmail maxes out my CPU and sends my laptop fans into leaf-blower mode. If it wasn’t for that I’d just use Firefox and be done with it

I updated Safari, and the problem appears to have been solved!

Thanks again for your help.

Juli

Narrowed down is good! I have Javascript enabled, and have checked “always accept cookies.” Should I change these?

Juli

Thanks for your reply. I am running OS X 10.4.11 and Safari 3.0.4 (523.12) . I do have Comcast cable modem.

Looking at the activity window, for this site, it shows 25 items loaded. That’s all, isn’t it?

I have checked other sites, and it seems that this one and gmail are the ones that most consistently have the blue bar. Gmail is now showing 6 of 8 items loaded, and has been spinning it’s little wheel pretty much all day.

I hope this is helpful, and thank again for taking the time to reply.

If you look closer at the Activity Window, are you sure you are seeing 100% of all items loaded?