peter martin

ckck:

It would seem silly for such a little thing to be a deal breaker, but the only reason I still haven’t switched to Safari as my primary browser is because it can’t do “I’m Feeling Lucky” Google searches in the address bar, like Firefox can.

I use this function in Firefox every single day, and it’s very handy to say the least. For example, if I type wiki and what I want to see a Wikipedia page of into the address, 95% of the time it’ll take me directly to that Wikipedia page. If I type imdb and a movie title, most often I end up at the IMDb page for that movie. Type ebert and hit enter, and it takes me to Roger Ebert’s reviews. And so on. It’s not always spot-on since it relies on whatever Google has as the top search result for that particular search query, but most of the time it is and it saves me a lot of time.

I’ve found one add-on for Safari that can basically do the same thing (though not as simply) that I’m going to take for a spin, but in general I don’t like having to rely on third-party add-ons since they can be unreliable, and may stop working some day. And frankly, this is something Safari should’ve been able to do natively for a long time now instead of wasting it on an error page, and it irks me that it still doesn’t.

Oh, and for anyone thinking “But there’s a Google search bar right next to it!”, that search bar doesn’t take you directly to the top result for a la “I’m Feeling Lucky”. It takes you to the Google search page first, and then you have to click the link there, an extra step that isn’t necessary since I don’t want search results.

Agreed. This is one of the primary reasons I switched from Safari to Chrome for my daily usage browser. I still switch over to Firefox occasionally for heavier usage, but Chrome’s simplicity and speed are destroying its WebKit cousin Safari right now.