I wanted to turn this off, but without turning off other auto complete functionality:

• I want to retain the autocomplete in forms (which can be managed from Tools -> Options -> Privacy)
• I also want to retain the autocomplete in the search box on the right (which can be turned off by right-clicking inside the box, and then checking off “Show Suggestions“)

But the Location Bar is a somewhat more involved beast. After hunting in the innards of “about:config” I discovered that this was possible. Just follow these steps:

1. In the location bar, type about:config. The location bar is of course the place where you type URLs. Note that this is your internal Firefox configuration. Don’t mess with it.
2. In the text box that appears at the top of this page, enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults as the preference name. (Tip: copy it from here and paste it into that box.)
3. Set the value to 0 if you wish to disable the auto-complete altogether. I have it set to 2 so I get some suggestions but it doesn’t crowd up the experience.

Apple is on to some exciting things. After the iPhone and the new eagerly awaited of the Max OSX, it even announced Safari 3 Beta for Windows!

The install was painless. Especially if you choose the no-Quicktime option (which Apple has no qualms about plugging shamelessly with almost every download it offers). I was also asked during the installation for ‘Bonjour‘ — a tool that supposedly allows better sharing of things such as printers.

The immediate uninstall

When I started the browser, it came up in some weird language. Greek, or Russian, or a specific kind of Celt. Who knows. I tried to reinstall, and it insisted on removing Safari first, which is ok, but it also required me to close Firefox, SecureCRT (for SSH) and WinSCP (for SFTP). I like my browsers to be independent of each other thank you. Opera never bothers with what else I am using.

The second and final uninstall

After the re-install, it showed up yet again in the strange language. Nowhere on my system is this language set up. All my browsers are set up to show only English, but support Japanese and Chinese. I guess it’s “beta” for a reason. It surely has a long way to go if it wants to be anywhere near decent contention to FF and Opera. Below’s a snapshot of what this gunk looks like on my machine:

Turns out these junk characters are not really a language at all. When I try to type something in the location bar, it comes up in this junk lingo. I try and rummage through these nonsensical options to see if one of the menus or submenus may have “English” as an option, but no luck.

Conclusion

This mutt is off my PC before it could even bark. So long, Safari, and thanks for all the fish.

When you read NYT or Mercury Times or some such news site, they require a pesky free registration. Bugmenot has been a neat community service that allows users to bypass compulsory web registration.

Now, how cool to not have to do anything but right-click in Firefox and retrieve the login info immediately?! The good folks at Roachfiend seem to have done precisely that. One nifty extension this one.

In Firefox, just click on this link and the extension will install automatically. Next time you start Firefox, all you need to do is right-click inside the login form of the site that requires the registration, wait a couple of seconds, and the form is automatically filled! Here goes:

When you do this, and “nothing happens”, most likely Firefox has disabled the extension from installing. You’ll see a yellow bar above this page then, which is a feature of Firefox. Click on that bar and ALLOW the site Roachfiend.com in your list of Firefox allowed sites.

Enjoy! The Roachfiend site has some other plugins, while you’re at it.