Steno-writing URLs in browser address bars

A big challenge while using steno and browsing the web is the address bar not cooperating when you type in steno. The scenario typically goes like this:

• Enter “you” into address bar.
• Address bar autocompletes to “YouTube.com”
• Instead of hitting return, you’re already typing “tube”
• Because “you” was lowercase, Plover attempts to backspace to replace the “you” with “YouTube”, but one of the backspaces is used on removing the autofill, so the output is “yYouTube” and now you have a useless query.

Firefox

The fix for this is a simple one. In Firefox, in the address bar, go to about:config, then filter for the results and find browser.urlbar.autoFill and set that value to false by double clicking it. Now you can see that you no longer have the problem of the bar autofilling while you are typing words, but you still get suggestions that you can navigate to when you need them.

Internet Explorer

Go to “Internet Options” > “Advanced” > Uncheck “Use inline AutoComplete in the Internet Explorer Address Bar…”

Chrome

It’s not really possible in Chrome, unfortunately. You can disable search suggestions and activate “prevent inline autocomplete”, but Chrome will always search through and autocomplete your history.

Microsoft Edge

There is no way to disable this behavior in Microsoft Edge at the moment.

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