[saithier]

I'm happy that the two are separate in Safari. The combined address / search bar is one of the things that I really don't like about Chrome, and part of why I don't use it. Searching and typing in an address are distinctly different tasks.

[danso]

How so? Everytime you type something in a search bar, it goes to a search engine's page anyway? So it's just shorthand for http://google.com?q=etcetc

[dissident]

I also don't use Chrome because of the combined elements. I think they serve different purposes and combining them is confusing (at least to somebody used to having them as separate features). I also use the search bar as a kind of clipboard, as I'm sure many other people do as well.

[makecheck]

Agreed. My ISP (Suddenlink) does one worse and automatically redirects not-found domains to some search results page of theirs.

The main problem for me is that I often see my typos about a fraction of a second after I hit Return. I know it's wrong and I just want to go fix it. But when something initiates a search, it completely changes the URL (no longer a simple fix) and the resulting page isn't even close to what I wanted. It all just slows me down.

[recursive]

That behavior is egregious. FWIW, you can probably fix it from your end by using a different public DNS server.

[makecheck]

True; I switched to Google's DNS a few weeks ago. (Is there an even better one?)

Until that point I was forcing my browser to filter out most of the ISP's page, because it was naturally filled with unnecessary images and ads and crap and was just slow.