Shortening URL auto-complete

June 18, 2004 1:13 PM

I really like the common browser feature of auto completing a URL request as I'm typing it. But it drives me crazy that, when I'm trying to go to Amazon.com, it auto-completes with http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060557540/qid%3D1087167862/sr%3D2-1/ref%3Dsr%5F2%5F1/103-9997594-7563029, which is the most recent sub-page I've visited at amazon's site. Is there a browser out there that will always auto complete with a site's home page -- maybe when you use a keyboard shortcut or something?
posted by grumblebee to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Safari, will autocomplete with your bookmarks before pages in your history. So if you bookmark amazon.com, even if you bury it in some sub-folder, the homepage will come up first. Doesn't work automatically without manually bookmarking, but it helps with the biggest offenders. My guess is most recent browsers do this too.
posted by samh23 at 1:23 PM on June 18, 2004

I'm not completely sure, but I have the feeling from personal use that Firefox does autocomplete upon how many times you visit each site. So if you always visit amazon.com first, it'll be first to autocomplete.
posted by jmd82 at 1:58 PM on June 18, 2004

I should mention that I'm on a PC, so I can't use Safari. But that sounds like a GREAT feature.
posted by grumblebee at 2:04 PM on June 18, 2004

The bookmark trick doesn't work with Firefox, but is use-based like jmd82 says. Because I go to some sites all the freaking time, if I type 'ama' into the address bar, the first link is http://www.amazon.com/, and if I type 'ask' into the bar, the first link is http://ask.metafilter.com/. So, if the main site doesn't show up at the top in Firefox, go to it a couple times and it'll bubble up to the top of the autocomplete list.
posted by zsazsa at 3:12 PM on June 18, 2004

Do you get a menu with possible urls? If not, you sould remove the inline autocompete feature (under Internet Options: Advanced), but still leave autocomplete on.

On my Mac IE will give me www.amazon.com as the first menu choice. I'm pretty sure Windows does the same thing.
posted by O9scar at 3:28 PM on June 18, 2004

To piggyback onto this question, I am actually using Safari. I tried the bookmark thing with the NY Times main page, but Safari still autocompletes with some old NY Times link I visited at some point. Is there a Safari setting that will make it work like samh23 describes?
posted by gokart4xmas at 5:54 PM on June 18, 2004

For recent versions of Mozilla, go to Preferences > Navigator > Smart Browsing From there, make sure Automatically complete text typed into Location Bar is enabled, and click the Advanced Button. In that dialog, enable Match only websites you've typed previously.

As its name implies, the autocomplete will only provide sites you've manually typed (or pasted) into the location bar, sorted by most frequent visits first. Since you'll more likely be going to the root of any site, this will generally be the first and shortest entry in the lot.

As an added bonus, this speeds up Mozilla's location bar autocomplete tenfold, since it has to look through a very narrow selection of sites compared to your full history. No idea whether Firefox supports a similar option.
posted by Danelope at 7:34 PM on June 18, 2004

Type 'amazon' into Firefox and then press Ctrl-Enter. It will automatically add the 'www' and the 'com' at either end and send you there...
posted by humuhumu at 12:05 AM on June 19, 2004