Having a dedicated search box is my big beef with every other browser.

If Firefox adds a single bar for search and URLs, I'd consider switching back, especially if they do a better job of history search than Chrome. (Chrome's history search sucks pretty bad in my experience.)

You can use the current URL bar for search. Either by settings or by using search keywords.

For example to search on Google "g search keywords", on Wikipedia "w epr paradox", Dictionary "d prometheus". Opera and Chrome have this too IIRC.

To search history "^ page keywords", bookmarks "* page keywords", tags "# tag words" (there are others, I blogged about them http://alicious.com/fast-bookmark-and-history-search-in-fire... or see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_search).

firefox has an addon called omnibar that does exactly this.

Good to know. I should give it a try.

Dramatic decisions are often criticized until people accept it and adapt.

I remember reading about how consumers wouldn't be able to adapt to a touch screen phone that didn't have a keyboard option.

I'm sure you'll still find people who can't get used to the touch screen keyboards.

Often it's the vocal minority that we hear loudest.

Sometimes what actually happens is that people get used to the change and get tired of fighting against. But they still don't like it at all. It's hard to see the difference from outside.

Exactly. Someone might have their leg amputated and complain for a while, then eventually accept it and adapt. This does not mean that having a leg amputated is a good thing.

That's not a fair analogy.

The alternative to not having your leg amputated in given example is likely eventual spreading of a disease and death.

With consumer goods and services often no one forces you to have to accept their changes.

No one forces you to use touch screen phones: there are plenty of alternatives which do include a keyboard.

Even if you don't like one input box does all approach, you can use previous browsers or browsers which retain the standard model.

If you don't like Netflix's price hikes, you can just use another service or don't subscribe at all. Your life won't decline because of it.

Not in every case. I want to use firefox because of some plugins. There is pretty much no alternative for them. Given that is was the best choice so far, I get to choose again between something that doesn't do stuff I need, or something that doesn't look the way I'm used to. Staying with previous versions is never an answer due to lack of bugfixes, security updates, etc.

Same mistake ubuntu does sometimes. It's the best in general, but has more and more really annoying changes in my opinion.

You cannot "just switch" in many cases. In some other you'll have to choose between two things you don't like the least. That's not a good outcome.

They haven't dropped it yet.

Personally, I don't like this at all, because you never know what information is getting leaked to the search engine...

Actually, you do: In Chrome, you can turn off search autocompletion for the top bar. It will search history and bookmarks, but not contact Google.

Which all of 0.0003% of people will actually turn on. It's not so much about me not knowing what is being sent, it's about anything users across the web type into the url box is sent to servers somewhere. It's not information companies need to know, anonymous or not.

I was mainly offering that to address jbk's personal concerns, and agree that as a default setting, it constitutes an unexpected information/privacy leak for most users.

I must thank you for this tip, that will help me quite a lot...

I prefer to use Firefox's Keyword Search bookmarks over wasting pixels for the dedicated search box. I couldn't live without my personalized search keywords for sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, Yelp, YouTube, Dictionary.com, Netflix, and more.

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords

Absolute worst case scenario, just put it back.

What's your beef with the chrome search box?

I don't have a beef. I greatly prefer it.

No, the search box is still there, and I'm pretty sure the solution to that won't be what Chrome does. I remember hearing something about the address bar becoming a little modal.