How to fix Firefox 3's address bar

Finally downloaded Firefox 3 (always wait until others have debugged software for you). The new address bar is obviously impossible: a) it's gigantic; b) they've changed the algorithm that remembers addresses you've typed so that 1) it pops up all kinds of improbable matches from every address you've ever typed rather than giving you choices with the same first few letters as you type them, and 2) it includes every address in your history, bookmark lists, tags, etc. It makes the address bar more like a mini search engine in its own right.

Firefox has long since trained me to remember the beginnings of addresses I use a lot so I can just type a few letters and hit enter. (You may want to know why I don't simply use a bookmark. Well, because I don't. I find it quicker to do things this way, and I don't have to move off the keyboard to find the mouse.)

So to return it to some semblance of the functionality FF had through version 2:

- Download and install oldbar, which returns the address bar to its FF2 size. Doesn't change the algorithm but vastly improves the look.

- Follow for example these instructions to edit about:config (with great care) to lose the bookmark, tag, and history search. This gets the list of matches down to something less pathologically wrong.

- Retrain your brain. Instead of typing the first few letters of the address you want, type the most unusual combination of characters that appears in it. (This is very similar to the way I game search engines, too.) So, say there's a Web forum you read frequently and a number of topic pages you check in on directly. Instead of typing "for..." to start the address, which will give you a load of irrelevant matches FF thinks might be right, type something like the page number ("46") at the *end* of such an address - there are likely to be far fewer matches. After a few iterations, FF will start responding like its old self because it will be putting the ones you've used at the top again.

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Several very useful add-ons are disabled in FF3. Tax Mix Plus lvoers will be glad to know that although the old version doesn't work there's a new beta that does: see here. While FF's session manager does the save and resume session thing, Tab Mix Plus offers a lot more options for controlling where new tabs open and so on.

wg
(Probably anyone who reads this has already either figured all this out or doesn't care; but at least I can find it again if and when I decide to update FF on the alptop.)