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problem after installing firefox 4

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by TonyE

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when i typed Samsung plasma TV in Firefox 3's address bar it would directly open Samsung's main site plasma TV's page or if i type Firefox ad-don calculator it would open Firefox ad-don page with calculator searched or if i typed Naruto shippuden episode list or anything particular like dalmatian,absinthe,python,Adolf Hitler,Brad Pitt,George bush,etc it would directly open the desired page in Wikipedia and if it didn't understood something like watch movie inception online, then it would open a Google search page with the above searched ,since Google is my default search engine.Now the above feature is not working after i have installed Firefox 4 .Now if i type anything in the address bar without using WWW........com it opens a search page for the same in Google without opening it directly.please tell me the solution as this is one of the most important feature because of which i use this browser.

when i typed Samsung plasma TV in Firefox 3's address bar it would directly open Samsung's main site plasma TV's page or if i type Firefox ad-don calculator it would open Firefox ad-don page with calculator searched or if i typed Naruto shippuden episode list or anything particular like dalmatian,absinthe,python,Adolf Hitler,Brad Pitt,George bush,etc it would directly open the desired page in Wikipedia and if it didn't understood something like watch movie inception online, then it would open a Google search page with the above searched ,since Google is my default search engine.Now the above feature is not working after i have installed Firefox 4 .Now if i type anything in the address bar without using WWW........com it opens a search page for the same in Google without opening it directly.please tell me the solution as this is one of the most important feature because of which i use this browser.

Modified by neilakhouri

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The change between Firefox 3.6.* and Firefox 4 is how location bar search works. In Firefox 3.6 it uses Google "Browse by name" search. With the browse by name search, it performs a Google search and if there is a clear match it will take you to the site, otherwise it shows the Google search result. With Firefox 4 it just performs a Google search if you type something which is not recognised as a URL.

To get the Firefox 3.6 behaviour on Firefox 4 you need to change a hidden preference.

  1. Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
  2. Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
  3. Locate the preference keyword.URL, double-click on it and change its value to the link shown below

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

If you prefer, you can also do this by installing the Browse by Name extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/browse-by-name