What happened to the address bar in 11.60?

What happened to the address bar in 11.60?

In 11.52 if you typed in the address bar you would get a drop down list of matching bookmarks and below that a list of history items. You would also get links under the different sections to expand them further as well as search. There were also bookmark and history icons beside each result to easily see what the item was. It's completely different now in 11.60 and not an improvement at all. Is this a bug or is it a new "feature" and is it possible to change it back to the way it worked in 11.52?

It's a "feature" and there is no way to go back to how it worked previously. People were complaining throughout the beta about it.

Seconded.
The new drop-down list seems like a big step back.

Not only does it make the google (or whatever search/ad) results much more similar-looking to the "real" results, it also shifts the balance largely towards the "artificial" search results/suggestions. 4 (useless) search suggestions, some of which even appear twice(?!), and 6 "real" results from bookmarks/history? No me gusta

I use a VERY clean interface with Opera (just tabs/address bar, nothing else), and always liked how you could use the address bar to quickly access - among everything else - bookmarks, by placing certain keywords in their name/description. So if I type "indie", I get all indie games, game developer studios, and pay-what-you-want bundle bookmarks. If I then continue to add "game", only the indie game site results remain. If instead I continued to type "bundle", I would get my indie bundle websites, etc etc. Sort of like a quick tag filtering system for bookmarks, without opening the bookmarks panel, or having some extra toolbar open.

While this still works - technically - it is largely useless now with the smaller number of meaningful entries, offset against the pointless search suggestions. If I wanted to search, I would've just hit enter and let my default search engine do the rest (including making suggestions).
The previous address bar behavior was part of why I loved Opera so much. The "update" seems more like a feature found on Internet Explorer. To me, it seems to convey a messages along the lines of "Our users are too stupid to know what they want. Let's suggest things for them, so they don't need to perform the painful task of thinking."


But, for me, the biggest gripe with the new popdown list, has to be the removal of the previous interface handling.
Why did you do that? It boggles the mind.
No more right-click on the list entries? No advanced options? Just click it or die? Whyyyyy?! *insert theatrical knee fall and scream here*
Maybe I would like to open this list entry in a new background tab. Maybe I would like to do this, or that, or ANYTHING. Nope, not any longer.

This new behavior becomes especially annoying when combined with my preferred method of accessing bookmarks, as described above. The new "balance" in the list would be a minor inconvenience if it had been the only change. But combined, this really makes my system crumble.
To stick with the indie game example:
I type "indie bun"[dle] into my address bar, which is already enough to trigger the desired filter - displaying the indie game bundle sites I like to visit frequently, to check for new offers.
Here is where the new update brings a certain bodily fluid to a boil - i cannot middle-click-open-in-background them all anymore. I can decide to left-click, opening one of the bookmarks, and losing what I entered, or ... well, that's the only option I have now. This is really stupid. If I want to check on all those bundle sites, I would have to make a new tab, re-enter (or paste, if copied) the text, and then choose a new entry from the list. That would take even longer than opening the bookmarks [panel, bar, whatever], navigating them, probably opening a folder or two, and opening the links the "common" way - which is what I wanted to avoid from the beginning by using my method.

A quick workaround for this was to put those bookmarks into a folder, and giving that folder a nickname. That way, I can still access (and open) all of those bookmarks by typing something short - BUT - this will always open all of the grouped links, which might not be what I intended. Also, it requires to specifically set up groups of links to work that way, and doesn't work for loose collections somewhere within your bookmarks.

To summarize:
BEFORE - I could access all my bookmarks easily by just typing a few letters upon opening a new tab, then do whatever I wanted with them, and never even once have to care about "managing" my bookmarks. Just throwing everything into the main bookmarks folder, and accessing what I needed by filtering worked perfectly, and was faster and more convenient than everything else I have seen before in any browser. <- This is what made Opera stand out
AFTER - I am forced to either use the default "bookmark handling", using many unnecessary clicks, or take special care of my bookmarks, preparing special folders with certain collections of links, to make them work in a vaguely similar way (although much more limited and "stupider") - and even then I only have a fraction of the former functionality. <- This feels like any of the "default" browser interfaces I was trying to escape by using Opera.


In conclusion, I cannot really see the benefit (or ANY benefit, that is) of the "new way". Maybe I am missing something really great and very important. If so, please enlighten me. The fact that the new popdown list provides (far!) less functionality than the old one, still stands however. Why would a feature like right-clicking get removed deliberately? It's not like the mouse button was needed for something else. It just does nothing now, as does middle-clicking. Or any other form of advanced interaction with the list entries. How, in a customizable browser like Opera, having less options than before can be "better", I cannot fathom.


Please, Opera Devs, please please pretty please with sugar coated icing on top - rethink this.
If you are totally convinced that the new list makes the Opera browsing experience so much better, at least consider giving your faithful long-time users the option to revert back to the old behavior, or even better, make the list itself customizable. Number of search suggestions [0-XX] would do the trick. Last time I checked, being able to customize your experience to suit your preferences and needs was kind of what Opera was about.
Oh, and no matter what you do in the future, bring back the advanced link handling in that list. There is just no reason at all to not have it anymore.

Thank you for your time,
long time user and fan - mist0rX

Mod edit: Off-topic comment removed. This is about the address bar not, all sorts of other things.

+1

the way I "dealt" with it for now was totally disabling history (and search suggestions for that matter).

+1

it's just so much slower accessing the bookmarks

Couldn't agree more. I can't imagine why they thought putting search suggestions before visited pages/bookmarks in the dropdown was a good idea. Searches are generally used one time only, there's no need to put them in front of bookmarks I access every day.

+1

I absolutely agree with mist0rx. The new order in the adress bar is horrible.

+1 Bookmarks before search, please.

Without icons address dropdown menu is useless.
Please any developer answer us, are you planning to bring icons back in drop down menu of address bar or maybe make option to enable or disable it?

I also have to agree. Since you usually search only once for sites and then save them to your bookmarks, the autosearch is not only useless, but also stands in the way. In the beginning, this function was anyway more to advertise googles search function in chrome, so there isn't really a reason to copy that.
Furthermore, although nobody here really seems to bother over here, there are also privacy problems in there. Something like real anonymity in the web might be an impossibility and maybe not even completely desirable thing. But sending every single letter you ever type in the address-bar to a company specialized in tracking your way through the web goes a bit to far. Before I couldn't think of a reason to switch back to firefox after being completely content over quite a few years with almost everything you guys did with opera. But this could be a reason for me and likely quite a bunch of others.
I didn't pay for this browser so it would be wrong to make claims. But really, please give us the possibility to switch it off. As mist0rx said, one of the strong points of opera was the ability to easily change basic behaviours of your browser. That really would do a favor to some of your long-time users.

+1 to disappointingly useless address bar behaviour. I wasn't happy with it in 11.52, but it's even worse in 11.60.

please, at least make the order of appearance of the results customizable

Check out this thread about how to disable the display of search engine suggestions. It helps a bit.
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1190632

I do not like the change. It doesn't even show the icons on the address anymore. I have a bar for searching; if I want to search, I'll use it. I don't need a second search bar attached to my address bar.



Reverting back to 11.52 til this is fixed or better update comes along

Tell me there's a quick option to return icons to the address bar? Can we at least add a shade of green or something to selected addys? Otherwise please enable the icons again. That is what I looked for - super quick reference, didn't have to strain the eyes reading a light grey font.

Please change it back.

There actually is a option which seems to deactivate the search suggestions. Options - Preferences- Suggestions - Search Suggestions. Also just noticed that grrrrr also had the solution linked. Well, that leaves us still with some changes for the worse. E. g. the missing seperations, the lack of symbols and the decision to put the history above the bookmarks, although you use the latter far more.

Bring us the old address field back please!

Some time ago, we had a very simple, but efficient address bar. Drop down list was long and it included only URLs. If I manually entered URL in the address bar, I was sure it would appear on the top next time. As I either use Google or manually enter exact URLs I know, it was great.

First, you took away the length of drop down list. I can't comprehend why, but developers/designers thought that short address bar is more usable. It. Is. NOT! I want to see as much URLs as possible and if it's in the list just quickly scroll to it instead of typing more and more to narrow down mathes. I don't want this “Show more” item, I want to see everything immediately.

Second, you added page titles which is probably great, but I don't care much. However (IIRC), at first, titles were secondary (that is, they were grey below the URL), then URLs became secondary. And what do we get now? A tiny fraction of the list space is devoted to the URL (30%?) and the rest is taken by the title. Maybe it's a little different on a wide screen (1920 and up), but I don't have one. Now I can't even see the complete URL.

Third, you made ordering of matching URLs “smart”. In quotes, because I've never seen it behave smartly. URL which I've visited once and never entered manually kept coming up first. And URL which I enter manually several times DAILY can be as low as 30th result and never come earlier. Is it that hard to list the URLs I enter manually first? Or is it considered an old-fashioned practice to enter URLs when I can just serach Google/page title in the history or something?

Fourth, you added bookmarks and what's not to the address bar. This is the one and only time you've made a useful improvement. Because I could disable unnecessary sections which I don't care about in the options. They kept showing up collapsed in the list, but that's okay, I can live with that. However, you took that away in 11.60. That's what this topic is about.

Fifth, you made it hard to enter local network URLs such as “http://localsite/”. I can't just enter “localsite”, it'll take me to google and ask me if I meant local address. As I develop websites and create a lot of virtual hosts (in the HOSTS file) it's very annoying. Some time ago I've learned that there's workaround, to enter slash after the address. But it's still just an undocumented workaround which can be “fixed” in the future version. If I want to search, there's a separate drop down one tab key way.

Sixth (right now), you made Unicode URLs appear as percent-encoded. Some international websites (Wikipedia in different languages etc.) use this a lot, so meaningful URLs become “%D0%B3%D0%BE...”. Other browsers were stupid at first and did the same thing. I was happy that Opera was wiser. Now it's the other way round.

Seventh, you made a presumption that your users are stupid and removed query and protocol by default and made them grey if user decided to see them. Okay, it's a “security” feature, but why can't I disable it? My sight isn't perfect, it's harder for me to read grey text.

Eighth, you added “bookmark” button which opens unclosable dialog and crashes Opera if I close the tab. A great new feature, yay!

What do we have now? Unusable address bar, which doesn't list enough matches, which doesn't display enough text of URLs to distinguish them, which doesn't support Unicode, which doesn't list sections to search within, which greys out most part of the URL, which forces search for local computer names, which randomly orders matching URLs

How much worse can it get?

Maybe some people consider new address bar convenient, but I want OPTIONS. I want to customize things to fit my taste. Since all this happened with the address bar (that is, since Opera began replacing great unique features with stupid implementations from other browsers), I didn't see much options added.

I want OPTIONS.
OPTIONS!!!

...and maybe some bugs fixed. ...maybe even before release, not in a version like 11.60.138.

Oh, it seems I've missed one more thing. Address bar no longer lists previous searches using custom search engines. If I enter “y ” (“y” being short for “Yandex”), nothing is listed. The address bar became absolutely unusable.

Hello there, just noting my agreement with the majority of posters here, new address bar behaviour is quite unpleasant, and makes Opera, as the best, most customisable browser somewhat less appealing.

Originally posted by atharip:

Oh, it seems I've missed one more thing. Address bar no longer lists previous searches using custom search engines. If I enter “y ” (“y” being short for “Yandex”), nothing is listed. The address bar became absolutely unusable.

Same here.

+1

Originally posted by atharip:

Address bar no longer lists previous searches using custom search engines. If I enter “y ” (“y” being short for “Yandex”), nothing is listed.

Hm, not sure it I understand your point correctly: The searchresults (=URLs and titles) of my previous searches with custom search engine "y" (stands here for youtube) appear in the search suggestions when I input "y" into addressfield. (opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowHistoryInAddressfieldAutocompletion must be enabled!). The searchstring, entered into the addressfield to trigger the search, can be be accessed via 'typed history' drop-down list. I wouldn't expect it to appear in the search suggestions. So "nothing is listed" means what?

Originally posted by atharip:

Oh, it seems I've missed one more thing. Address bar no longer lists previous searches using custom search engines. If I enter “y ” (“y” being short for “Yandex”), nothing is listed.

You can see previous searches if you press the down arrow key on your keyboard.

Originally posted by jtsn:

Opera now transmits everything you type into the address bar to Google to increase revenue from it.

It has been that way for a long time and there is no change from the previous version, which was already doing the same.

Originally posted by johnf888:

Originally posted by jtsn:

Opera now transmits everything you type into the address bar to Google to increase revenue from it. That's also a big privacy problem, because not everyone wants Google to know every site they visit.

To get something clear: You are not the customers of Opera Software, because you don't pay for their products. You are the merchandise to be sold. Opera's customers are search engines, companies that book placements on the speed-dial and of course device manufacturers, so they develop software, that fits the needs of these people, not yours.

Deal with it.

jtsn,

You hit the nail on the head. It's all about money, marketing and information sharing. How else can Opera survive in the Google-world we live in?

Nope, that's wrong. Opera sells something to us, and we pay for it. It's just not as obvious as an normal transaction. Or why do you think opera gets money from other companies? Out of goodwill? Surely not. They just get things that are worth enough to pay for them. That's how it works, whatever pleasant lies you always hear.

But do you know how many companies went bankrupt because they started on some point to concentrate on the side they directly got money from? Who do you think would pay them when nobody uses opera? I'll wait in which directions this develops, and when the developers think they just have to work for a bunch of companies, I have to switch to another browser. That's how it works, if you aren't contented with a product, you try another. And it's nowhere easier to do so as in a web-based market with free products.

Originally posted by johnf888:

You hit the nail on the head. It's all about money, marketing and information sharing. How else can Opera survive in the Google-world we live in?

Stop derailing the thread, you mentally challenged kids.

Opera is not making money from search suggestions. In fact, they are LOSING money on it because Google only pays for actual searches that are sent to them. Search suggestions were added because people demanded them.

But this is not about your insane, paranoid, delusional conspiracy theories. This is about the new address bar. And the search suggestions aren't even new in this version.

All you are doing is to get this thread closed. Stop being *ssholes. Stop hijacking the thread. Shut the F up about irrelevant stuff.

Originally posted by mochikun:

Hm, not sure it I understand your point correctly: The searchresults (=URLs and titles) of my previous searches with custom search engine "y" (stands here for youtube) appear in the search suggestions when I input "y" into addressfield. (opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowHistoryInAddressfieldAutocompletion must be enabled!). The searchstring, entered into the addressfield to trigger the search, can be be accessed via 'typed history' drop-down list. I wouldn't expect it to appear in the search suggestions. So "nothing is listed" means what?

Originally posted by LeoCG:

You can see previous searches if you press the down arrow key on your keyboard.

Let's suppose I type the following:
y word0
g word1
g word2
example.com/word3
word4.example.com
y word5
y word6
example.com/word7
g word8
example.com/word9

When I type “y ” in Opera 11.5, I get the following suggestions:
Search for "" with Youtube
y word6
y word5
y word0
That is, Opera lists search queries I've made with “y” search engine below a clear description of what I'm about to search with.

When I type “y ” in Opera 11.6, I get the following suggestions:
  - Youtube
That is, Opera just lists search engine name.

When I press drop down button (which is GONE by default in 11.6 and has to be enabled in opera:config!), I get the following:
example.com/word9
g word8
example.com/word7
y word6
y word5
word4.example.com
example.com/word3
g word2
g word1
y word0
That is, I get everything I typed (which is often a lot) and there's no way to get just queries for “y” search engine, or, as I could do in 11.5, filter queries for “y” even further by typing more. The search query history is gone.

If I enable “ShowHistoryInAddressfieldAutocompletion” option and type “word”, I get plenty of suggestions from all sorts of URLs crammed into tiny drop down list. I don't need every single page with a word “word” in its URL, title or text, I want previous searches within “y” search engine.

I don't like the new address bar, I agree with all the complaints above.

And how do I get rid of the star in the address bar? I opened the customization for the address bar but didn't find any option for the star.

Yes, it's a step back.

Originally posted by LeoCG:

You can see previous searches if you press the down arrow key on your keyboard.

I hate this new behavior. It's a step back.

+1

Logged in here in the myOpera forum again because of exactly this problem! Wanted to search for a fix for the address bar in the Opera preferences. Seems I'm not the only one who doesn't like the new behaviour.

The main reason for me wanting back the 11.5 behaviour is this: I often visit a certain web forum. I used to type three or four letters of the URL and then select the correct link with arrow keys. I knew the most interesting sub-forums are the ones with forumURL.../phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=10 and ...?f=20. So I would select those directly (it was already annoying that you have to enable showing the GET-parameters in Opera prefs, but I can live with that as long it is optional).

With the new address bar, I cannot see these entries any longer because the URL is cut at 1/3 of the address bar width. In addition, there is now the (useless) title of the website right 2/3 of the address bar. For that specific forum of course Opera will find many matches - but the titles are always "Forum Abc * Show thread * A...". So right where all these titles differ, the address bar ends and puts ...! In addition, I don't understand how these entries are sorted. In 11.5, the most interesting URLs were always among the first few hits.

So in short, it would be nice if the old sort order could be restored and if you could enable showing the full URLs. I don't need the webpage titles in the address bar. Or if you want to keep the titles, what about two lines (URL, Title) per history entry?

The slimmer rows in the new address also increase the likelihood of clicking the wrong link. Fitt's Law comes to mind, since it is easier (and takes less time) to click on something larger, plus not everyone's vision is the best. For usability and accessibility, the new address bar is a step backwards because it is harder to click on the correct entry, unless you slow down and move the mouse cursor more carefully.

The thinner rows, combined with the removal of icons, takes the usability to an even lower level, since now not only are the rows smaller, but there are no visual hints to guide us to the site/page we wish to visit.

+1

please opera developers, bring back old address bar behavior, remove search results since such stuff is already available with the "search-with" UI-elements and bring back icons.
I've lots of bookmarks, each of them attached with useful bookmark search-keywords (placed into the 'detail' field of each bookmark).

In my case typing e.g. "jsf api" into the addressbar brings all relevant pages which i've bookmarked for that very technical topic.
This and the small preview icon allows me to navigate very fast to my preferred page(s).

The new behavior forces me to look over a lot of "spam" entries which i'm really not interested in.

And finally, my last wish, as soon as addressbar works again as expected the new bookmark-star icon should get another option 'Edit bookmark' for quick access to bookmark details (for instance to edit search/details keywords)

+1 to all of this, particularly mist0rx's way of looking up bookmarks! And bring back the favicons.

I just got Opera maybe last week and I was really liking the address bar. This new one....hmph....

~Ibrahim~

I prefer the old one... but with the style of the current one which is a 1 liner results.

I don't mind the change too much, but I do prefer the previous way.

+1

+1

pleeeeease opera! listen to your users!

+1, one of the reasons i still use opera 10.10

Can/should we move this to the wish-list subforum, then?

Discussing about it here won't do much good, I don't think?

+1
I don't like the new address bar, I agree with all the complaints above.

It's kind of too broad for wish-list at the moment. That is, it's really like 3 topics for the wish list. If someone wants to start them, feel free to do so.

I agree with the above comments. Had I known about this ahead of time -- I guess I didn't notice it or really grasp it -- I would not have upgraded. I should have known something like this would happen, since every time I upgrade, I lose the ability to do something.

Originally posted by grrrrrr:

Check out this thread about how to disable the display of search engine suggestions. It helps a bit.http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1190632

Not useful, the solutions there either 1- mess up your default search engine choice, 2- disable suggestions when using keywords or 3 -disable the finding of pages via writing text of theirs content. I'm not willing to lose any of those functionalities and thus stuck in 11.52 for now.

I have made a blog post with all the new featherweight URL auto-complete drop-down list cons if you're interested in.

I've made two suggestions on the wish-list forum, if you guys want to check them out/post. Let me know if I put something wrong.

Prioritize bookmarks over history for address bar searching
Bring back favicons for address bar searching

I used 11.52 for maybe 1 week, so I don't understand the other changes enough to write a post. But, these two were immediately noticeable and immediately unwanted. Let's fix this!

~Ibrahim~

I may actually stop using Opera, my favorite browser, just because of this address bar change in 11.60.
At least, provide me with a very easy way to disable it, preferably during installation.

Those who also want the icons back can vote for it here. Maybe it helps.

Originally posted by alpkup:

I may actually stop using Opera, my favorite browser, just because of this address bar change in 11.60.
At least, provide me with a very easy way to disable it, preferably during installation.

At least we can still go back to 11.52 for the time being, cross our fingers and hope the address bar regression is reverted when 12.00 goes final.

Originally posted by flansuse:

At least we can still go back to 11.52 for the time being, cross our fingers and hope the address bar regression is reverted when 12.00 goes final.

It is clearly an intentional design change. That doesn't mean it cannot be changed back again, but that rarely happens, so waiting is likely to prove futile — it is better to look for other ways to do what you need to do.

Reverting to an old version is seldom good advice. Apart from all of the many bug fixes recorded in the Changelogs, and improvements provided by the updated HTML5 rendering engine, there are also some security fixes.

Originally posted by Pesala:

Originally posted by flansuse:

At least we can still go back to 11.52 for the time being, cross our fingers and hope the address bar regression is reverted when 12.00 goes final.

It is clearly an intentional design change. That doesn't mean it cannot be changed back again, but that rarely happens, so waiting is likely to prove futile — it is better to look for other ways to do what you need to do.

if there are enough people who aren't happy, it's not unprecedented that opera will change their minds if enough users raise their voice (e.g. the horrible mouse gesture implementation for version 11 that was reverted after enough users complained).

+1 for remembering previous searches, described by Atharip. It was very, very useful! Now it's gone.