IE8 address bar

God I hate IE8. Not quite enough to be bothered to uninstall it, but it's close. The worst thing about it is the address bar. Why put History and Favourites in the drop-down? They have their own place in the UI. When I open that dropdown I want the addresses that I typed in. 

The IE8 address bar drop-down only displays 12 typed addresses plus the other stuff that shouldn't be there. There's no scroll bar like there was in IE7. I know that more than 12 typed addresses are stored because sometimes (and I've no idea how or why) IE8 doesn't display History and Favorites in the drop-down and shows 24 typed addresses instead and they're all things I typed, so I know it is storing it, it's just only displaying the 12 most recent most of the time. When did UI designers start thinking it was a good idea for software to get in the way of the information we want. It would have been so easy to add an 'expander' to the Typed Addresses section of the drop-down (like the History and Favourites sections) have, but they didn't.

Anyway, has anyone else seen this happen? Is there a trick to get the drop-down to just display typed addresses?

I won't bore you with all the other ways IE8 is a useability step-back from IE7 (which was also a step back from IE6). I'm going back to FF (not brave enough to try Chrome).

I like the address bar like it is.  I want it to display history etc, because chances are they're places I want to go to.

In fact I woudln't mind the address bar and search bar being merged, like Chrome.

daSmirnov said:

I like the address bar like it is.  I want it to display history etc, because chances are they're places I want to go to.

In fact I woudln't mind the address bar and search bar being merged, like Chrome.

Well yes, I guessed someone would like it otherwise they wouldn't have implemented it. What I want to know is: Is there a way to turn it off and if not, why not?

My biggest problem with the address bar is that it displays my local folders. 90% of the entries are C:\Users\ZippyV\Desktop\blabla
I don't want to browse my C drive when I'm looking at the address bar in IE.

ZippyV said:

My biggest problem with the address bar is that it displays my local folders. 90% of the entries are C:\Users\ZippyV\Desktop\blabla
I don't want to browse my C drive when I'm looking at the address bar in IE.

This, and the history/favorites thing being on top. I like them in the dropdown, but not on top. Also it sometimes randomly seems to forget things. For instance, when I remember parts of a url, I type something like "channel9 hardest riddle" and it usually shows me the http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/4454576-The-Worlds-Hardest-Riddle/ URL I typed earlier, but sometimes it just forgets about it and shows me nothing. Is this going to be like favicons all over again?

If you dont like it, turn it off. It has that option.

Seems that if I hit the drop-down arrow while IE is still initializing then it just shows typed addresses and will continue to do so until IE is completely closed and restarted.

So it's probably a bug. One which I hope they don't fix, at least until they give us an option to make the dropdown work like it did in previous versions.

Bas said:

ZippyV said:

*snip*

This, and the history/favorites thing being on top. I like them in the dropdown, but not on top. Also it sometimes randomly seems to forget things. For instance, when I remember parts of a url, I type something like "channel9 hardest riddle" and it usually shows me the http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/4454576-The-Worlds-Hardest-Riddle/ URL I typed earlier, but sometimes it just forgets about it and shows me nothing. Is this going to be like favicons all over again?

I am hoping there is an IE 8.1 or 8.0.1 or 8.5 anything newer that addresses these concerns and more. Tab open delay perhaps?

I doubt it though. In all likely hood, if this is to be fixed, it will be in hotfix form, probably named KB9492393.

I wander if someone over at IEBlog has been reading this thread?...

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/04/20/customization-in-ie8.aspx

History & Favs in address bar is the sole reason to install IE8. I suggested that feature in Connect and it's super duper useful for me as I can type a part of some eg. forum thread title and bang it comes from history.


edit: but yes sometimes it's not quite doing what you'd expect. Especially straight after cold boot it doesn't find anything from history, it seems to take some time for the indexing service or whatever it uses to get up and running or something. I have no idea.

androidi said:

History & Favs in address bar is the sole reason to install IE8. I suggested that feature in Connect and it's super duper useful for me as I can type a part of some eg. forum thread title and bang it comes from history.


edit: but yes sometimes it's not quite doing what you'd expect. Especially straight after cold boot it doesn't find anything from history, it seems to take some time for the indexing service or whatever it uses to get up and running or something. I have no idea.

 the IE8 sidebar + favourites/rss/history should have had a lot more work done... I've yet to see any IE8 sidebar addon either .. probably because its absolute crap. And compared to Maxthon(s) sidebar or FF AiO sidebar +addons.. really at bare minimum their should by now have been a search field in both favs/history sidebars(let alone a proper management method with deadlink+favicon updating).. having to use the address bar to get a  searching both is just stupid if all you wanted to do was search through your history or favourites seperataly, saying that the IE8 address bar compared to FF3.. its close... really I'd want hybrid of both. with some extra improvements.

Anyway this is Internet Explorer, its still the pits in more ways than I could possibly be bothered to go into.

customization-in-ie8.aspx <that customization?  LOL are they taking the piss or what? 

Koogle said:

androidi said:

*snip*

 the IE8 sidebar + favourites/rss/history should have had a lot more work done... I've yet to see any IE8 sidebar addon either .. probably because its absolute crap. And compared to Maxthon(s) sidebar or FF AiO sidebar +addons.. really at bare minimum their should by now have been a search field in both favs/history sidebars(let alone a proper management method with deadlink+favicon updating).. having to use the address bar to get a  searching both is just stupid if all you wanted to do was search through your history or favourites seperataly, saying that the IE8 address bar compared to FF3.. its close... really I'd want hybrid of both. with some extra improvements.

Anyway this is Internet Explorer, its still the pits in more ways than I could possibly be bothered to go into.

I've got nothing against having search fields everywhere, it's a great as it gives the search a context. However I do like Google too. And I really like doing things from the keyboard. Doing a search from one bar then finding out that you need to go with a mouse to another place is not very optimal experience. For this reason among others, during Vista beta I suggested they'd add a feature into start menu search that does everything from one place but also giving ability to narrow it in short form (similar but shorter form of eg. site:msdn.com in google). Want to search favorites? Just press Win key, type f:whatever the f would be user customizable namespace and the separator : would also be user customizable so it would be optimally placed on the keyboard layout you use.

There's something similar but afaik not quite as good in the start menu search which can be configured with group policy.

edit! Ok so you can go to favorites with alt+c I notice, which is quite fast but that's already a compromise since alt+f is file menu.

androidi said:

Koogle said:

*snip*

I've got nothing against having search fields everywhere, it's a great as it gives the search a context. However I do like Google too. And I really like doing things from the keyboard. Doing a search from one bar then finding out that you need to go with a mouse to another place is not very optimal experience. For this reason among others, during Vista beta I suggested they'd add a feature into start menu search that does everything from one place but also giving ability to narrow it in short form (similar but shorter form of eg. site:msdn.com in google). Want to search favorites? Just press Win key, type f:whatever the f would be user customizable namespace and the separator : would also be user customizable so it would be optimally placed on the keyboard layout you use.

There's something similar but afaik not quite as good in the start menu search which can be configured with group policy.

edit! Ok so you can go to favorites with alt+c I notice, which is quite fast but that's already a compromise since alt+f is file menu.

You can use Start++ for custom searches in the start menu.

And if u use a keyboard your a n00b.

androidi said:

Koogle said:

*snip*

I've got nothing against having search fields everywhere, it's a great as it gives the search a context. However I do like Google too. And I really like doing things from the keyboard. Doing a search from one bar then finding out that you need to go with a mouse to another place is not very optimal experience. For this reason among others, during Vista beta I suggested they'd add a feature into start menu search that does everything from one place but also giving ability to narrow it in short form (similar but shorter form of eg. site:msdn.com in google). Want to search favorites? Just press Win key, type f:whatever the f would be user customizable namespace and the separator : would also be user customizable so it would be optimally placed on the keyboard layout you use.

There's something similar but afaik not quite as good in the start menu search which can be configured with group policy.

edit! Ok so you can go to favorites with alt+c I notice, which is quite fast but that's already a compromise since alt+f is file menu.

"Doing a search from one bar then finding out that you need to go with a mouse to another place is not very optimal experience."

I never said having the address bar bring up results from different locations favs/history etc was a bad did I?  ...nope I didn't, my post was merely agreeing with OP and doing some  IE bashing

"I've got nothing against having search fields everywhere, it's a great as it gives the search a context" ...exactly its just nice to have it there for when its something you want to specifically do..

http://brandontools.com/content/StartPlusPlus.aspx   I can't remember if there was the option of having it direct the search url to your default browser and not have the result display in the startmenu.. but whatever I can't stand to look at Vista/7 startmenu and not used much at all really, why use a startmenu for internet purposes if youre only going to end up viewing and using things in your browser anyway, I suppose if your browser wasn't already opened using the startumenu like that is a quicker shortcut.. but for me the web browser is always running. More power functionality like that can be setup in your browser where you can do things straight from there.. if that isn't IE ofc.

Bring back the IE6 UI!

If you hate is so much just use another version.

ziare said:

If you hate is so much just use another version.

It's not like Firefox where every version from 1.0 is pretty much standards compliant, IE6 is awful and IE7 has room for improvement. Then there's the issue of security...