Thread

1. jval43 · 1789667302 · focus · HN ↗

   Google Chrome did this in 2008. Full-text search over all visited pages, stored offline. It was very useful and I miss it.

   Nobody seems to remember it, even though it was a headline feature. Was removed in 2013, I think due to technical constraints.

   Will definitely try this.

   1. TeMPOraL · 1789716814 · focus · HN ↗

      Now we have no browser capable of searching in anything - not even Firefox. I routinely try, in several browser, to find a tab among open tabs, a bookmark among open bookmarks, or a history entry (both from "omnibox" and dedicated history pane), and it never seems to find it - not by name, not by URL - until it gets a 100% unique match.

      It's like there's a timer or a cache somewhere, with aggressive limit, saying "only scan these top 100 results and then abort if it takes more than 10 ms to findf anything", or something. Making this completely useless.

      That's on top of occasional deletion of browsing history past few weeks.

      1. vbarrielle · 1789718814 · focus · HN ↗

         Have you tried searching with @tabs, @bookmarks or @history? It works reasonably well for me.

         1. TeMPOraL · 1789732076 · focus · HN ↗

            Yes. Try it regularly, against inputs I know correspond to things visited or bookmarked within last couple months. Almost never gives the actual result unless it's literal full-string match. That's why I'm complaining.
      2. negura · 1789725100 · focus · HN ↗

         Maybe stop using the mickey mouse browsers? I mean Firefox is pretty much a lost cause.. unless you start using extensions. I agree those are basic features that should be built-in. In qutebrowser I use them reliably all the time. E.g press T (keybinding for :tab-focus command) - type keyword (matches against tab ID, page title, page URL & the tab's process ID) - press Tab - menu is populated with results - cycle through them using Tab/Shift+Tab - press Enter to jump to it. Similar workflow for history, different bookmark types, etc. History can also be loaded as an HTML page and jumped through with regex, etc. If you want to stick with
      3. arantius · 1789838091 · focus · HN ↗

         For things I access often, the Firefox address bar does function like a near-perfect search for me. Some things I type [ab cd] and the page with the words _starting_ ab and cd pops right up.

         A while back I looked up a manual for an old Singer sewing machine, which turned out to be the model 15. So I typed [sin 15] in the address bar and -- yep, first result! A week ago I looked into the game Metroid Dread. Typed [met dre] and two relevant pages from my history came up, immediately.

         I don't know what you mean by "100% unique match" but, this feature works for me, and in fact I regularly use it and find it very worthwhile.

         1. arantius · 1790519125 · focus · HN ↗

            No one will ever see this (probably) but I remembered this comment, and just had this experience:

            I've been learning the eBay developer APIs. Recently (i.e. within the past few hours) I looked up the "Browse API" specifically. My first or second try failed so I typed just [ebay brows] and didn't find it! But when I finished [ebay browse] that document (within ebay.com and titled "Browse API | eBay Develo...") did show up!

            I can't reproduce now so I can only guess but it's possible this was a timing thing. I was typing several things, and changing/re-typing "as soon as" I did or did not see what I wanted to show up. But there was definitely a moment where I'd expect "that page I just had open an hour ago" to be at the top, but instead search suggestions (ugh, search in the address bar ...) were all that was showing.

      4. witrak · 1790003202 · focus · HN ↗

         I'm not sure what exactly you mean by saying "I routinely try, in several browser, to find a tab among open tabs, a bookmark among open bookmarks," but if you - like me - keep hundreds of open tabs in a couple of dozen windows and you can't find the tab you need at the moment, then you may be happy with the Firefox extension tabFx...

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