Web search is the only place where Chrome's Omnibar is significantly superior to Firefox's AwesomeBar. The user experience is very un-polished and Firefox has three search systems (keyword.URL, quicksearch bookmarks, search plugins) which seem to be independent yet each is missing something another provides. I think, to reach parity with Chrome, the following changes need to be made: 1. Make search engine settings editable when the search box is hidden (bug 522040 which is being worked on in bug 335781) 2. If a user types a search plugin keyword, it should appear in the awesomebar drop-down the way quicksearch bookmark keywords do (bug 782555) 3. Add a "Set As Default" button to the "Manage Search Engines" dialog to provide a UI for setting keyword.URL outside about:config (bug 782559) 4. In the longer-term, look into options to unify quicksearch bookmarks and search plugins to avoid maintaining two copies of the same functionality with two different, incomplete sets of features (bug 782562) 5. Transparently retrieve OpenSearch definitions to be stored as part of the browser history and provide an equivalent to Chrome's "Press Tab to search <most likely domain completion>" prompt. (bug 782557)

How about allow site:foo.com to work without thinking it is a protocol...

Stephan, do you want to keep this bug ? Thanks

There are still two parity concerns. It's just that one got fixed in a way which was a technical solution without actually achieving parity. I've filed a new bug to cover that, leaving two open ones that block this.