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sniffnoyEvery now and then it happens that I accidentally delete a site I commonly visit from autocomplete, and have to spend quite a bit of time clicking on links repeatedly to boost it back up. What I would like is a way to manually give a page a big frecency boost so I don't have to do that. And no, bookmarks do not count. (I have autocomplete-to-bookmarks turned off, actually.) Why? Because a bookmark persists. Guess what? If I stop visiting a site, I want it to gradually fall back down in the rankings, like it should. I don't want to have to manually unbookmark. I just want a way to send the browser a message, "Yes, really, I visit this site a lot, so please give it a boost right now (but don't assume that this will always be the case and treat it normally hereafter)". Downward too would be nice.
That's just really annoying, though. That's not the part that makes no goddamn sense.
Scenario: Less Wrong, a site I not so long ago read constantly[0], recently changed their main page to an intro page for those new to the site; the old blog-style main page is now at http://lesswrong.com/promoted/ . (This isn't a bad thing - I suggested this, actually!) But of course that's to help new people - the idea being those of us who don't need such a page will just have the old main page on autocomplete. Now admittedly though I don't check it regularly anymore it still bugged me that if I tried to just go there and autocomplete as usual I ended up at the new main page instead, so I set out to fix that, clicking on links repeatedly to artificially boost the score of the page I wanted to end up on.
At this point I should probably note that I have Firefox configured so that autocomplete works essentially like old-style autocomplete - it matches only URLs, and only beginning of URLs. Otherwise the scenario I'm about to describe will seem to make no sense. Or less than the no sense it already makes, rather.
After lots of doing this, the address http://lesswrong.com/promoted/ still wasn't at the top of the autocomplete list I got for "http://le", or "http://l"... but it *was* at the top of the autocomplete list for "http://"! (I.e. for null, since "http://" is ignored.) WTF? Gaining more information should not cause reversals! OK, I'd seen before that this sort of reversal could happen in Firefox, but not to that extent! And annoyingly, I didn't want it at the top of the null-autocomplete, since it's not my most-frequented site. Not that I use null-autocomplete, but it bugged me. But, y'know, apparently it thinking it's my most-frequented site isn't enough to get it to the top of the more specific lists?
So what was I going to do? If I boost it up more, it'll still be at the top of the null autocomplete. Screw it, I figured, I'll delete it and start over, also deleting the entry for "http://lesswrong.com/" that it had to compete with. Did this. Must have spent damn near another hour getting it to the top again... and the same thing happens! I successfully get it into second, below "http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/"... but before I can get it to first, it somehow makes it to first on the null-autocomplete!
Maybe I should just delete from autocomplete *everything* from Less Wrong and start again.
Also: I only just upgraded from Firefox 3 and I am damned annoyed that this new version doesn't care about www at the beginning of a URL. I use that to distinguish where I'm going, damn you! If I highlight everything after "http://" and type "l", I'm going to Less Wrong; if only highlight everything after "www." and type "l", I'm going to LiveJournal. I do not want these mixed together! I am glad it ignores and doesn't distinguish "http://" and "https://", but that is rather different, because in that case picking the "wrong" one will often just redirect to the other, as opposed to taking me to a different site entirely! I'd just turn this off but I can't find anything in about:config for it.
Of course, the above paragraph points in a hole in the plan I just suggested, because now "http://lesswrong.com/promoted/" will be competing with pages from LJ, so... yeah...
Also, is there any goddamned way to turn off "Switch to tab"? I don't see one anywhere. If I wanted to switch to the tab, I would have switched to the goddamned tab! I want to open a new one, that's why I'm telling you to. Much of the annoyance of this could be avoided if Firefox at least had a simple way to open a duplicate tab, but SFAIK it still doesn't have this, and now you can't even do it the direct way because it'll just switch to your old goddamned tab!
Maybe it really is time I just switched to Chrome...
-Harry
[0]Stopped about the time of the calcsam AMA. Still read new main-section posts, but not much more. Might start again sometime, though I probably have better things to be doing.
That's just really annoying, though. That's not the part that makes no goddamn sense.
Scenario: Less Wrong, a site I not so long ago read constantly[0], recently changed their main page to an intro page for those new to the site; the old blog-style main page is now at http://lesswrong.com/promoted/ . (This isn't a bad thing - I suggested this, actually!) But of course that's to help new people - the idea being those of us who don't need such a page will just have the old main page on autocomplete. Now admittedly though I don't check it regularly anymore it still bugged me that if I tried to just go there and autocomplete as usual I ended up at the new main page instead, so I set out to fix that, clicking on links repeatedly to artificially boost the score of the page I wanted to end up on.
At this point I should probably note that I have Firefox configured so that autocomplete works essentially like old-style autocomplete - it matches only URLs, and only beginning of URLs. Otherwise the scenario I'm about to describe will seem to make no sense. Or less than the no sense it already makes, rather.
After lots of doing this, the address http://lesswrong.com/promoted/ still wasn't at the top of the autocomplete list I got for "http://le", or "http://l"... but it *was* at the top of the autocomplete list for "http://"! (I.e. for null, since "http://" is ignored.) WTF? Gaining more information should not cause reversals! OK, I'd seen before that this sort of reversal could happen in Firefox, but not to that extent! And annoyingly, I didn't want it at the top of the null-autocomplete, since it's not my most-frequented site. Not that I use null-autocomplete, but it bugged me. But, y'know, apparently it thinking it's my most-frequented site isn't enough to get it to the top of the more specific lists?
So what was I going to do? If I boost it up more, it'll still be at the top of the null autocomplete. Screw it, I figured, I'll delete it and start over, also deleting the entry for "http://lesswrong.com/" that it had to compete with. Did this. Must have spent damn near another hour getting it to the top again... and the same thing happens! I successfully get it into second, below "http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/"... but before I can get it to first, it somehow makes it to first on the null-autocomplete!
Maybe I should just delete from autocomplete *everything* from Less Wrong and start again.
Also: I only just upgraded from Firefox 3 and I am damned annoyed that this new version doesn't care about www at the beginning of a URL. I use that to distinguish where I'm going, damn you! If I highlight everything after "http://" and type "l", I'm going to Less Wrong; if only highlight everything after "www." and type "l", I'm going to LiveJournal. I do not want these mixed together! I am glad it ignores and doesn't distinguish "http://" and "https://", but that is rather different, because in that case picking the "wrong" one will often just redirect to the other, as opposed to taking me to a different site entirely! I'd just turn this off but I can't find anything in about:config for it.
Of course, the above paragraph points in a hole in the plan I just suggested, because now "http://lesswrong.com/promoted/" will be competing with pages from LJ, so... yeah...
Also, is there any goddamned way to turn off "Switch to tab"? I don't see one anywhere. If I wanted to switch to the tab, I would have switched to the goddamned tab! I want to open a new one, that's why I'm telling you to. Much of the annoyance of this could be avoided if Firefox at least had a simple way to open a duplicate tab, but SFAIK it still doesn't have this, and now you can't even do it the direct way because it'll just switch to your old goddamned tab!
Maybe it really is time I just switched to Chrome...
-Harry
[0]Stopped about the time of the calcsam AMA. Still read new main-section posts, but not much more. Might start again sometime, though I probably have better things to be doing.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-08 01:41 pm (UTC)Chrome, by the way, doesn't even show "http://" for plain HTTP sites (and takes it out when you type it in if you don't get redirected to HTTPS). I suspect that part of the reason why it does this is it uses SPDY instead of HTTP where possible, and they don't want to confuse users with it (how confused would the average user be by seeing "spdy://google.com"?).
no subject
Date: 2011-07-08 10:46 pm (UTC)I include it out of habit since I figure it's ignored anyway. I wouldn't know which things do or don't support HTTPS anyway since Firefox doesn't keep their autocompletes separate. In any case I have the HTTPS Everywhere add-on installed so I don't much worry about that. (I have it turned off for Google and Wikipedia, though. Google loses some functionality over HTTPS, and Wikipedia I found to be too slow.) I doubt anyplace I go not on that list probably doesn't bother to support it in the first place...
Chrome, by the way, doesn't even show "http://" for plain HTTP sites (and takes it out when you type it in if you don't get redirected to HTTPS). I suspect that part of the reason why it does this is it uses SPDY instead of HTTP where possible, and they don't want to confuse users with it (how confused would the average user be by seeing "spdy://google.com"?).
Yeah, I heard about that! Basically I just like the idea that what I type matches up with what actually gets displayed afterward so with Chrome I can accept that as there that's the convention. :)