Searching in Mobile Safari is Not Very Friendly

This has become a major annoyance for me when using Safari on iOS, and I wonder why Apple does not fix this.

When I use a browser on my desktop, if I want to search I simply type the term in to the Address Bar, this works in Chrome, Firefox, or IE, the three browsers I have installed on my machine.

chrome search

On my Android device (Droid X) the experience is the same I can type a URL, or search term in to the Address bar.

Android

Then we get to Mobile Safari on iOS (Screenshots are from an iPhone, but the experience is the same on an iPad).  For some reason Apple had decided to split URL, and Search in to two different fields. 

photo 1

When you are in the URL field (on the left), the keyboard is designed to type URL only does not have a space bar, so you can not even try to enter a search term there. If you are in the search field (on the right) you then get the regular keyboard with the Space bar allowing you to search:

photo 2 photo 3

Is anyone else bothered by this? I frequently find myself trying to search in the URL bar,  realizing after I finished typing (the first word) of my search string, only to have to do it over in the Search field, why doesn’t mobile safari just work like every other browser out there?

I am sure there are other browsers available for iOS, Opera comes to mind, Firefox Mobile does not seem to have iOS support yet, but I really haven’t bothered to look at it or other options, the browser that ships should be good enough for my mobile browsing needs.

2 Responses to Searching in Mobile Safari is Not Very Friendly
  1. Scott Harcourt
    December 16, 2010 | 10:04 am

    I don’t think this annoyed me until Chrome showed me what an Omnibox was 🙂

  2. Chris Whisonant
    December 16, 2010 | 2:20 pm

    It’s never bothered me in 3+ years of iPhone usage… If I want to go to a URL, I type the url in. If I want to search, I go to the search box. I also do this in Firefox.

    Here are my FF shortcuts… 🙂

    Go to new website:
    CTRL+T (new tab) then just type url

    Search for something:
    CTRL+T then CTRL+E to go to search box. I can CTRL+(up/down arrow) to then navigate which search engine/site to use