Omnibar for Windows

Omnibar is a simple Firefox add-on that combines the browser's address and search bars into one, much as Google Chrome does. Although Omnibar does succeed in this task, its other promised features don't pan out.

We installed Omnibar and restarted Firefox, and true to its word, the extension combined the search and menu bars. A small icon at the right end of the bar shows the current search engine, and clicking on it reveals other options. If that's all Omnibar had promised us, we would have been quite pleased. The publisher's description, however, informs us that we can "quickly switch engines using search engine keywords." We can? Really? How? We'd also like to know how we can search multiple engines for the same query, another feature listed in the description. Omnibar has no Help file, and although there are some customizable options, none of them seems particularly relevant to these mystery features. There is a check box that allows users to "Enable search for queries without search keyword or operator," but we still couldn't figure out what this had to do with the features promised by the publisher's description. If you're looking for a way to emulate the combined address and search bar that are one of Google Chrome's hallmarks, this extension is fine. But if you're interested in the other features that Omnibar seems to offer, be prepared for disappointment.

Omnibar is free. It installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this program with reservations.