Wednesday, October 29, 2003
I’m a web developer and I test stuff locally, hence a lot of the time I’m looking at http://localhost.
I use Firebird as my default browser, which has keyword searching built into the address bar, so every time I go to localhost and my web app server is not running I get thrown to the highly classy http://www.localhost.com.au.
Fortunately this can be disabled.
Type “about:config” (without quotes) in the address bar. This will retrieve a list of all the available preferences for your browser. Type “keyword” (again without quotes) into the “filter” text box and hit <enter>.
In the returned list you should see a preference called “keyword.enabled”. Double-click this entry to bring up a box where you can change the value of the preference. Type “false” in the box and hit <enter>.
Voila keyword searching from the address bar has now been disabled (you might need to restart your browser). Things like the built in Quick Searches will still work, i.e. typing “google wellingtons” will still bring back search results about your favourite boots.