Firefox's "awesomebar" goes into autocomplete mode as soon as you type in 1 character. That seems silly to me, and it hangs for a few seconds when I first start the program up, as it does its thinking + database queries / caching / whatever.
Is there a way I can suppress autocomplete until at least 3 or 4 characters have been typed?
Besides the 'search.timeout' configuration (in Sean's answer),
a few more suggestions here and here might make your experience better.
You may want to look at,
browser.urlbar.default.behavior'browser.urlbar.matchBehavior'
You may also want to "vacuum" the database Firefox uses to store your history - believe it or not, it greatly improves the speed of the awesome bar.
There are two ways to do this - manually, or through an extension.
Manually:
Open the Error Console - Tools->Error Console (on a Windows computer, you can press Ctrl + Shift + J)
In the Code box, paste the following line (it's one line):
Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");
Press the Evaluate button. Firefox will seem to "hang" as it cleans up the database.
Extension: Vacuum Places - after it's installed, just click on the little vacuum in the status bar, and it cleans everything up!
I don't see a setting to set the minimum characters required to launch a search, but you can try increasing the searchTimeout setting to, say, 700 (ms) from the default of 100. This will give you a chance to type a few more characters before the thrashing begins.
