Add Chrome-Like URL Completion & Quicksearch

Awesomolocity

Yeah, two years later and this is still the single feature really holding me back from switching to Vivaldi. I keep trying to do it, and...this holds me back. This is something that appears to be part of the Chromium source, and is a part of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and even Brave, which is probably the closest competitor to Vivaldi imo.

It's really unfortunate that this still isn't integrated into Vivaldi, even as an optional setting. It's super intuitive for users once implemented.

yashpalgoyal1304

@Awesomolocity can u record an illustrative gif please?? (ShareX is free software for that if u dont have one)

Ayespy

@Awesomolocity Since it's mediated through the UI, Vivaldi will have to write their version of it from scratch. The one in Chromium can't be used in Vivaldi's interface.

Awesomolocity

@yashpalgoyal1304 Tab to search (Gif quality isn't great, so here's the mp4 video: https://imgur.com/a/brBlRkZ)

In case it's not clear - the functionality is really smart. As you're typing, the first suggested website kinda pops up into the navigation bar. If you've done a site search on that particular website before, it'll have a "tab to search" functionality - regardless of what letter you're on. It's quite similar to Vivaldi's "shortcuts", but even more intelligent and intuitive, I think. For example, I can type "yo" and youtube will likely be the first suggested result. Hit tab, and I can start typing my search query. You can see this taken to the extreme with "amazon" in the example above - I typed "a" and then was able to hit tab to start my search query.

@Ayespy Does Vivaldi have a straight up different UI system on top of the Blink engine? If so, I did not realize that. Regardless - it's still something they'd be able to replicate functionality of if they desired, I'm sure. And I hope it happens, because it's the one thing really holding me back from leaping over entirely.

Ayespy

@Awesomolocity said in Add Chrome-Like URL Completion & Quicksearch:

@Ayespy Does Vivaldi have a straight up different UI system on top of the Blink engine?

Yes, it does. It's the only browser that does.

Awesomolocity

@Ayespy That's a pretty nifty tidbit that I did not realize before today. Thanks for that!

Ayespy

@Awesomolocity Yeah - the unique elements and architecture of the UI is what enables the flexibility and configurability that Vivaldi offers. It has trade-offs, in that certain "expected" functions have to be re-written from scratch, and don't work "as expected" until that can happen, but to my mind, it's worth it because I can arrange the UI per my work flow in Vivaldi, and in no other browser. So, there's that...

yashpalgoyal1304

@Ayespy or other mods, can u add this gif in description (and on the forums itself, i.e. rather than imgur link).

Ayespy

@yashpalgoyal1304 The .gif itself exceeds allowable upload size.

thekhury

since early 2018 someone request it, and it still doesn't exist

it's the feature which I miss the most!

adding a new search engine, as metioned here, don't work at all
I added YouTube, but when I seach, it just go to the main page
in Chrome, it will do automatically, in any site, even in Google Translator!

Please Vivaldi team, add this feature!!

thekhury

@greybeard if you won't ever use, you're wasting time!
no need of going to main page of YouTube to do any seach
or in Google Translator, or GitHub, or whatever site you want!

czert

This really is an addictive feature. I switched from chromium to vivaldi yesterday (thanks to vertical tabs) and this is the one thing I miss the most. It might seem like a minor improvement and that the keyword search is enough, but man, once you get used to this, there's no comparison.

Please, reconsider implementing this.

Awesomolocity

@jakepaint You can do the same thing with Vivaldi by adding search engines and giving them a nickname, but bangs and tab to search are really not comparable. If you haven't tried tab to search, I really recommend messing around with it.

Basically, after you use the search feature on any website, it'll automatically (not manually) learn the search pattern for that website. And then when you're typing in the URL bar, you can start typing the website name, hit tab to bring up the suggested website and then type your search query. It's super intuitive and bangs are not exactly the same - especially if you have to memorize the bangs for each website.

Also it's kinda convenient to not have to rely on another search engine to hopefully have the page you're looking for indexed when you can just go directly to the site you wanted to search

khansh

Hey just wanted to chime in that this is still a deeply wanted feature. Hopefully it's being worked on in some form, would love to fully switch from Chrome over to Vivaldi.

LachlanSleight

Just adding in that the omnibox is (so far) the only thing that I'm really missing in Vivaldi when compared to Brave/Chrome, which I recently switched from.

Also, I just want to add that for most users, adding custom search shortcuts is absolutely not a replacement for the auto-detection of search patterns in the omnibox.
I think it's easy to get trapped in a bubble where you, and everyone you know, are 'tech-savvy'. But most users don't know what a URL query parameter is.

I just went through and added Google Image search to my search shortcuts, and literally had to remove query params one by one until I discovered that tbm=isch is the parameter needed, so the full pattern is https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbm=isch.
95% of users will not be able to figure that out, and so for them, 'quick image search' is just a feature missing from Vivaldi. They won't google the problem, they won't find this page where I've just explained how to do it, they'll just be frustrated, and if it's a big enough issue for them, they'll switch back to Chrome.

Apperspace

This is the only thing that I wish Vivaldi had. Not necessarily the fact that you need to press Tab instead of Space, or whether it's based on the website name or a user-defined nickname, but the automatic detection of search engines from websites. I could be wrong, but this seems like an easy thing to implement. The detection system is already present in the Chromium core, and it could easily be integrated with the current nickname system. Maybe a popup similar to the notification one, saying something like "This website offers a custom search engine. Do you want to add it?", and upon clicking Allow the usual Vivaldi "Add Search Engine" dialog would be shown, with the URL and Suggest URL already filled in, allowing the user to enter the desired nickname. Also, it seems weird that Vivaldi's search engine system (from vivaldi://settings/search) is separate from the Chromium one (from chrome://settings/searchEngines), so maybe anyone knows the reason for that.

fabse

I would love to have this feature coming from chrome/edge it is extremely convient.
You type: wiki<TAB> and you can search in wikipedia.
The idea here is that opensearch is automatically added a a search engine. Putting this behind an option would be nice.

mib2berlin

@fabse
Hi, maybe I miss understand but in Vivaldi you can type w searchword to search at Wikipedia.

Cheers, mib

fabse

@mib2berlin
I know and that is what I am using as the alternative.
The feature I am talking about is this:
Once you have visited a webpage which defines the OpenSearch standard for it's page via an xml definition that browser then knows that it can search on that page. I do not have to add the search engine manually in anyway. Having this as an option would be great, by then typing wikipedia.org<TAB> or often wi<TAB> is enough you trigger the search directly in the address bar. See the video above from an earlier post as well.

ErikLevin

Just adding another voice here saying that this is the main feature I'm missing in Vivaldi and its inclusion would make me switch.