[owlmirror]

Now I better understand why they butchered the address bar the way they did. Instead of treating it like simple form element their change served one point and one point only, draw attention to it and make it more prominent. And the reason for it was just to serve their ads on a bigger and more intrusive canvas and not UX related.

[ubercow13]

Well, no, the address bar is one of Firefox’s best UX features. Thank god it’s not just a simple form element, it’s much more useful now. Before it was something like the Windows run dialog text box but now it’s more similar to my zsh prompt with aliases for searching and fuzzy history recall etc.

[owlmirror]

I see the benefits for these features, but do not see why the bar had to become that obtrusive in appearance and behavior for them.

But for me these features are useless at best and a distraction in practice, I don't want suggestions from my browser, at all, I want to think for my self.

I use the url bar simply for entering addresses, or for copying and editing them. I completely disabled my history and what I want to remember I keep as bookmarks. When I want so search something I use the search box.