Lately much discussion was caused by Google’s decision to hide the Location Bar in the next Chrome/Chromium version. Seems like Mozilla wants to follow suit. I believe Location Bar still has its important place in a browser, and would like to offer a better solution for Mozilla.

The Problem¶

Reasons for Location Bar hiding/removal are those:

• users do not know how to use it;
• it takes up valuable vertical space;
• Google (or any other) search works almost just as well, and users use that instead anyway.

Additional reasons for Google are obvious: more search data – instead of going directly to a website, users will have to actually use Google Search.

The Solution¶

…is simple. Make a huge and visible, window-centered Location Bar (that can work as a searchbar too) the default homepage in Firefox. This has many benefits:

• new users will get a nice, visible UI as soon as the browser starts, without loading any page (and exposing any data to Google);
• power users will get the Location Bar at their fingertips, and won’t lose an important, valued tool.

Moreover, Mozilla will be leading the charge instead of following in Google’s footsteps.