Now, if you love this minimalist concept of combining the search bar and address bar into one and want to implement it in Firefox, here are two extensions that can easily do the job.

Omnibar extension

Omnibar extension has been around for quite some time (since Google Chrome was first released). What it does is to hide away the default search bar and integrate the feature into the address bar.

After installing the extension, you will find that your search bar is gone and your address bar is now extened all the way to the end. There is a new icon at the end of the address bar. Clicking on the icon will display your list of search engines where you can choose which one to search.

Before:

After:

Select search engines

In the Settings page, there are options for you to choose if you want it to show suggestions (based on your search terms) and how many suggestions for it to show.

One interesting option is that you can choose the mode to display the suggestions. You can either get it to show rich mode, slim mode or rich & slim mode. Here’s the differences between the various mode:

Rich mode:

Slim mode:

Rich and slim mode:

You can further customize if you want the search engine name or icon to display in the address bar.

Foobar extension

Foobar (not to be confused with the Foobar2000 media player) is an experimental addon (at this point of writing) similar to Omnibar in many aspects. It also combines your search bar into the address bar and displays an icon at the end for you to select the search engines.

The differentiation between a search terms and an URL has been pretty accurate. One thing though, if you have previously set a keyword for your search engines, you won’t be able to use it here. For example, if you have previously associated ‘you’ with youtube.com, you should be able to perform a search in youtube.com with the search term ‘you michael jackson’ , but in Foobar, this feature does not work at all.

In the settings page, you can see that Foobar comes with lesser configuration options.

You can configure the search to open in new tabs or in current tab and whether to show suggestions for search and URL. As in omnibar, it also comes in two different modes: simple and rich.

Conclusion

Personally, I feel that if you really love the Chrome omnibar, you might as well use Google Chrome instead of Firefox. If for some reasons that you are not able to ditch Firefox, probably because you are in need of some useful extensions that are not available in Chrome, then the above two would serve their purpose well. I would think that they are most useful when used in a netbook environment where the screen real estate is limited.

What do you think?

Now, the question is: can this search process get any easier?

The answer is Yes, if you are using Inquisitor. You’ll be surprised how much faster, quicker and easier you can now search with the search bar.

Inquisitor is a browser plugin that extends the functionality of the search bar. It makes the search bar more intuitive, responsive and much easier to use. As you type in the search bar, Inquisitor starts to search the web and brings back the result on the fly, and enabling you to access to your search result faster.

Inquisitor is owned by Yahoo and is compatible with Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, 8. It also works in Mac, PC and iPhone.

Once you have installed the respective extension for your browser, it will automatically replace your search bar. To perform an intuitive search, simply type in the search bar. A list of suggestions will appear as soon as you type. The initial result is based on your browser history, but as you type, the list get refined and brings in more relevant result for your search term. In most cases, I am able to find what I want without having to complete the search terms.

Inquisitor also comes with several configuration options that you can set to suit your preferences.

Options that you can configure include:

Auto-complete settings

Inquisitor will attempt to auto-complete your search term as you type. You can either make it auto-complete the entire phrase, current word or do nothing. Personally, I have found that choosing the “auto-complete current word only” option gives you better control of your search results.

Instant result setting

In the dropdown list of suggestion, you can You can choose how the result is displayed, whether website result first or keyword suggestions first.

Display count

Number of website results and keyword suggestions to display in the dropdown list.

Search Engine

The default search engine is Yahoo. You can also set it to Google.

A thing to note here: If you set the search engine to Google, the website result search will cease to work. You will only see keyword suggestions in the dropdown list.

Display links to additional search engines

If you are frequently using Wikipedia, Flickr or any other search engines to perform your search, this is where you add in the additional search engine to the dropdown list.

Conclusion

Depending on how often you use your browser’s search bar, this plugin can be useful/useless to you. For me, it has definitely improved my productivity and enabled me to get my search result much faster and easier. Being cross-platform/cross-browser compatible also make it a highly versatile tool, not to mention that it works great in iPhone and iPod Touch too.

What do you think?

1) Installing Add to Search Bar extension

Add to Search Bar is a Firefox extension that allows you to add any search engine to your search bar. Go to your favorite site. Right click on the Search box and select “Add to Search Bar“.

2) Create your own search engine via Mycroft Project 

Mycroft Project is a site created by the Mozdev team that hosts a collection of Sherlock and OpenSearch search engine. It also has a form generator that you can use it to create your own search engine.

• Go to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/submitos.html
• Fill in the form details
• If you are not sure what to put in the Search URL field, go to your favorite site and perform a search with the site’s search bar. On the address bar, copy the URL and replace your search term by {searchTerms}. Paste the result into the Search URL field. For example, when you search Make Tech Easier, you will get a URL something like this:

http://maketecheasier.com/about/search-result/?cx=012219648382774935931%3A71v9_lruh3c&cof=FORID%3A11&q=your-search-term

Replace your-search-term by {searchTerms} and you get something like:

http://maketecheasier.com/about/search-result/?cx=012219648382774935931%3A71v9_lruh3c&cof=FORID%3A11&q={searchTerms}

Paste this URL to the Search URL field. 

• Once you have completed the form, scroll down and click on the Generate Plugin button. Code will show up on the text area.
• Click on the Install Plugin. A window will pop up and ask you if you want to install the search engine in your search bar. 
   
• Click Add. Once you are happy, click Submit Plugin to enter your search engine to Mycroft database.

3) Hacking the backend

If you don’t like to install any extensions as you might feel that it will slow down your Firefox’s performance and you don’t want to submit your search engine to Mycroft, the other way that you can do is to hack the backend of Firefox. Don’t worry, it’s very easy.

• Open up a text editor.
• Copy and paste the following to the text editor.

<search
name=”Name_Of_Search_Engine”
method=”GET”
action=”URL_Of_Search_Engine_Result_Page”
queryCharset=”utf-8″
>
<input name=”search_parameter” value=”Value_of_parameter_required_to_carry_out_the_search”>
<input name=”q” user>
</search>

• Change the Name_Of_Search_Engine to your search engine name.
• Change the URL_Of_Search_Engine_Result_Page to the search url of the site (without the search parameter)
• In the input field, enter any relevant search parameter in the search url. Leave the <input name=”q” user> as it is.
• Save the file and give it a .src extension (for example: your_search_engine.src) 

If you are using Windows, save the file to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

If you are using Ubuntu, first save the file to the desktop. Open up your terminal and type

sudo cp ~/Desktop/your_search_engine.src /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/

If you are using Mac OS X, this method does not work. 

Restart your Firefox and you should find your new custom search engine in the search bar

Adding an image to your custom search engine

Create a image of size 16×16 pixels and save it with the same name as your search engine. It doesn’t matter if you save it as jpg, gif or png.

Now copy and paste the image to the same directory where you place the search_engine.src file.

Done!