Instantfox does much more than just eliminate the need for the search box.  You can also get results instantly as you type and loads up content on the fly.  There is some memorization needed to remember the quick search key-letters to type on to the address bar to do your searches.

g » for Google Search
i » for Google Images
m » for Google Maps
y » for Youtube
t » for Twitter
w » for Wikipedia
a » for Amazon
e » for eBay
c » for Calculator

Now, while some might see this as a drawback – I actually see this as a useful feature. This means I can use Instantfox when I see fit and it doesn’t totally replace the way Firefox handles the address bar. In everyday use, the Firefox address bar is the same as it always was.  However, if you type in g then a space and then type out a keyword – you are searching Google instantly.  I like that.

Want to learn more about this amazing little add-on for Firefox? Head on over to Instantfox.net.

There you have it.  Once you have done so, it will ask you if you want to switch into Firefox’s private browsing mode.  You could also save about:privatebrowsing as a bookmark, so you have easy one click access to the private browsing mode, without adding any extra add-ons to Firefox.

Now here is my challenge to all of you out there, does anybody know a quick way to stop private browsing, and return your browser back to normal (other than the traditional menu method).  If you do, leave it in the comments!

The Awesome Bar (or address bar, as those “normal” browsers might call it) does a great job at matching a web site saved in your bookmarks or history when you start typing in the Awesome Bar.  By default, Firefox doesn’t give you a way of saying, “Don’t show these bookmarks there” so now somebody has written up an add-on to give you that ability. 

The NotAwesome add-on for Firefox will help you hide any bookmarks tagged with “notawesome” from awesome bar searches.  This way you can totally flag bookmarks you don’t want showing up in the Awesome Bar results.

You can pick up this great add-on via the Firefox Add-ons web site.  (credit for this find goes to Lifehacker, when in turn goes to gHacks too!)

TwitterBar, which funny enough isn’t some geeky place to buy alcoholic beverages, is a simple Firefox add-on I know a lot of you who use Twitter will enjoy.  What does it do?  It turns your location bar in Firefox into a Twitter client.

The way it works is a small Twitter icon sits to the right of your location (or address) bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.

Its short, simple and reeking of awesomeness. 

If you give it a shot, remember to come tweet me up @mitchkeeler. 

See on the top and bottom?  It has never looked right to me.  So I did a little playing around with the Stylish extension for Firefox, and turned it into this:

Now I am far from being a Jedi master of Stylish, and writing user styles.  I am just learning the basics.  Since this was a big annoyance to me though, I thought it might help somebody else out there.

Download Stylish, and then go down to the task bar icon for it, right-click and select “Write Style” and then “Blank Style”.  Type in any description you wish (mine is “Round Address and Search Boxes”) then type this into the text box for your user style:

#urlbar {
-moz-appearance: none !important;
-moz-border-radius: 3px !important;
padding-right: 1px !important; }

#searchbar .searchbar-textbox {
-moz-appearance: none !important;
-moz-border-radius: 3px !important; }

Hit preview to test it out, and if it worked – then hit the save button.  This worked for me using Firefox 3/Vista Ultimate, so hopefully it will work for you.  If anybody has any pointers, be sure to share!

Looking at Google Chrome features that could be ported to Firefox with an add-on, one of the most obvious additions many people wanted to see was Google Chrome’s Omnibar.  It mixes both the search box and address bar into one browser feature. 

The simply named Omnibar extension gets the job done, and adds a few new features where Google let us down in Chrome.  First, the most obvious feature (as pictured above) it gives you all the features of the search box in your address bar.  The problem, and thing they can not duplicate yet – is showing search results in the Omnibar for Firefox.

Omnibar does support  searching multiple search engines for same query in one go.  All you need to do is use this type of setup:

A general search query is:
@engine1,engine2 your search query

or,if you prefer to give engine name at the end:
your search query@engine1,engine2

Might not be perfect yet, but it does show a lot of promise.  If you have suggestions for it, check out this thread about it, and if you want to give Omnibar a shot – download it on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

What if you just want to do a regular Google search? 

There is an easy way to turn your address bar into a Google search box.  You want to type into your address bar about:config.  Next, type into the filter keyword.URL. Once you have found it there, modify the string in there and replace it with:

http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=

From now on, when you type in a word or phrase into the address bar and hit enter, it will launch a Google search for it rather than giving you Google’s top result for that word or phrase.

Here is a little more about the Shrinkify extension from the developers:

The Shinkify Firefox extension makes long, unwieldy URLs shorter with the Shrinkify.com web service. Using either a toolbar button, right-click menu item, or tools menu item, you can submit your current url to the Shrinkify web service. The shrinkified URL will then be copied into your clipboard.

Also might be worth noting that the Shrinkify extension came in 8th in this year’s extend Firefox competition.  So if you are looking for a simple way to shrink your URLs built right into the browser, Shrinkify is your best solution.

The oldbar addon replaces Firefox 3′s new address bar with the one that you are used to now in Firefox 2. Here is the new Firefox 3 address bar (or otherwise known as the location bar):

Then here is the classic one you will get with this Firefox 3 extension:

You can pick up the oldbar extension over at the Mozilla addons web site.