430678 - KB article: Smart Location Bar

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Articles, task)

Description

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

This is a tutorial describing the functionality of the awesomebar.

Paul, in <http://www.numenity.org/blog/2008/04/23/getting-ready-for-the-launch-of-firefox-3/> you mentioned tutorials for what's new in Fx3. Is the Smart Location Bar among them? If so, what info is in the tutorial?

Comment 1

[David Tenser [:djst]]

These screencast tutorials are part of a marketing project that isn't 100% set in stone yet, but they will not be the typical support article screencasts that we're planning for SUMO, which focus on solving a problem or describing how a feature works. 

However, here's a description of the location bar that would be useful as a basis for this article:

A quick way to get to the sites you love—even the ones with addresses you only vaguely remember. The new Firefox 3 location bar learns as you use it—it’s so highly evolved that we like to call it the “Awesome Bar”. Over time, it adapts to your preferences and offers better fitting matches. Type in a term and the autocomplete function includes possible matching sites from your browsing history, as well as sites you’ve bookmarked and tagged in a drop down. For example, you could enter the tag: “investments” to find “www.fool.com”. Matched terms are highlighted, making the list of results easy to scan. 

Comment 2

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Does Smart Location Bar include Larry? Does it include the bookmark star?

Comment 3

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

There should be an emphasis on searching because people are familiar with typing in multiple words to do search.

Comment 4

[myles7897]

I think we should have a separate article for "Larry", since the bookmark start is in Bookmarks article.  This article should cover, only, the improved searching.

Comment 5

[Bo]

I'm stuck offline waiting for the cable guy to give me Internet in my new apartment, so I wrote up a rough draft for this.

Feel free to add/subtract/finish this; I might be out for a few days.

Comment 6

[Bo]

Oh, and comments:
* I searched the KB or whether we call it "auto complete" or "autocomplete". The latter seems to be more prevalent.
* If we don't include the "Disabling the Smart Location Bar" section, we need to make it its own article - we get this question a lot in the forum. It seems to inspire lots of belligerence, so it would be nice to be able to point people somewhere.
* This is a super awesome sexy feature in FF3, so this could probably use more pretty screenshots.

Comment 7

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Oh, and comments:
> * I searched the KB or whether we call it "auto complete" or "autocomplete".
> The latter seems to be more prevalent.

Yes, use autocomplete. We're using answers.com for these kinds of spelling issues, and autocomplete gives the best "answer". :-)

> * If we don't include the "Disabling the Smart Location Bar" section, we need
> to make it its own article - we get this question a lot in the forum. It seems
> to inspire lots of belligerence, so it would be nice to be able to point people
> somewhere.

It should be a separate article. If we add enough similar tags, it should appear in the related articles list.

> * This is a super awesome sexy feature in FF3, so this could probably use more
> pretty screenshots.

Definitely. And I think the sreenshots need more context. Instead of just cropping out the Location bar (which sorta looks like a table because of all the white background), include the stuff around it so users know that it is the Location bar.

Other than that, I prefer David's intro. It describes the purpose of the feature, rather than what it does. Although we should not include the term "Awesome bar". If the purpose of including it is for people searching for 'awesome bar', try to sneak the word "awesome" somewhere in the article. :-) We should also avoid referring to 'training' the Smart Location Bar, because that implies that you have to teach it. It learns on its own, simply be observing your actions.

I think we can also include entering multi-word terms, like "ginger carrot cake" in Deb's tutorial <http://www.dria.org/wordpress/archives/2008/04/17/628/>.

You can also remove references to using the default theme. (i.e. "If you are using the default theme, these items have a yellow star.")

Speaking of which, it's a blue star on Mac; so we can use SHOWFOR for that, or just call it a star.

Comment 8

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Forgot to add, I filed a bug for the Site Identification Button article.
bug 435961

Comment 9

[Bo]

Re-worked it some. I sneaked in "awesome."

I have a multi-word example, but it's not as good as "ginger carrot cake." I didn't have any good ones in my history that I could find, and was offline.

Comment 10

[Bo]

Filed Bug 436147 for Disabling the Smart Location bar.

Comment 11

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Moved to KB at:
Sun 08 of Jun, 2008 01:43 EST

Further discussion should take place on the staging copy:
<http://support.mozilla.com/kb/*Smart+Location+Bar>