VIRB

I downloaded Firefox 3 a while back, and have since then
suffered through an excruciatingly slow
response from the URL bar. It was so slow that I nearly
threw my computer out the window. The reason for this
slowness is that Firefox has developed a URL bar that is
smart enough to remember what you've typed in the past, and
presents you with matching, relevant options from which to
choose when typing strings into the URL/location bar. When
this works, this feature is phenomenal, as I've seen it work
on other computers. The response time is very fast, and the
options to choose from are always relevant. However, when
this feature is so slow that it forces you to wait for
results to appear as you type, and won't complete what you
are typing, it becomes a complete killer. Because this very
situation was happening to me, I tried turning this off in
the preferences section. The problem... The option to do
so isn't available. This was extremely frustrating. So
much so that it nearly drove me away from using the browser
ever again. After many failed attempts at finding a
solution, I finally came across a blog entry written by Dustin Diaz
explaining the features of the new Firefox 3 browser, which helped
fix my problem (thank you very much Mr. Diaz). Since the
solution to my problem took so long to figure out, I thought
I'd share the solution in hopes that it helps anyone else
who runs into this.

Solution

In your super-slow URL bar, type in "about:config". This
should bring up a message that may scare you that states the
following:

Fear not, what I tell you to do won't hurt the browser.
It'll will only make it better. Once you click "I'll be
careful, I promise", you'll be taken to a page that lists
all the configuration parameters that you can modify, and
there are a ton. We only care about the 'URL bar'
parameters, so in the 'Filter:' text box at the top of the
page, type "urlbar" and hit enter. This will bring up only
the configuration options for the URL bar:

Next, find the "browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped" parameter,
and doubleclick on this row. This will change it's value to
true.

That's it. This should speed up the response time on the
URL bar, and make you happy, and more importantly, love
Firefox all over again.

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