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Comment by all_factz | Hacker News Reader

One thing that's frustrated me about FF (and kept me using Chrome) is that local development is a pain in general... for example, when I type `localhost` in my nav bar, Chrome autofills the port; FF doesn't (it just puts `localhost/`, which is useless). Next, FF interacts oddly with NGINX, telling me `The plain HTTP request was sent to HTTPS port`, whereas Chrome just passes me right along, giving me a little `Not Secure` text next to the URL.

Given I have to go to this website about 1000x per day, you can see why using FF is painful...

Anyone have any advice (on config, for example) for fixing this? And if anyone on the FF team is listening... I'd like to use your browser, but this has kept me from doing so.

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Firefox definitely autofills ports based on your history. Below is a screenshot of it doing it for me.

https://imgur.com/a/VRXsyUf

I don't know what is going on with your nginx setup. Most likely you've configured it differently than you think you have, or are making different requests in Firefox and Chome without realizing it. Both firefox and chrome behave the same for me when I make an http request to to a server using https (e.g. http://www.example.com:443/)

>for example, when I type `localhost` in my nav bar, Chrome autofills the port; FF doesn't (it just puts `localhost/`, which is useless).

What? Isn't it the opposite? I have the exact opposite experience with Firefox and Chrome, FF autofills the ports and Chrome doesn't oO

I just checked it right now to be sure I reminded correctly

I have opposite experience with Chrome as well: I like when URL bar behaves just like URL bar and does nothing extra. I worked in company that used custom TLD for all sites in internal network, and every single time I entered such `site.tld` in Chrome's URL bar it insisted on _searching_ for that instead of just appending protocol, '/' path and visiting it like reasonable browser.

To be honest, Firefox likes to mess with input too, but it can be easily tamed with few prefs, namely:

    keyword.enabled=false
    // no implicit searching from URL, must use explicit keyword or Searchbar
    browser.fixup.alternate.enabled=false
    // this prevents trying www. … .com or other configured suffixes when domain-like URL fails
    browser.urlbar.trimURLs=false
    // do not hide protocol and slash
    browser.urlbar.filter.javascript=false
    // bookmarklets FTW

Not sure about firefox, but localhost definitely autofills localhost for me in chrome.

What port? If I

    $ sudo python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80

Then type localhost into the firefox url bar, I get the directory listing

It's 4443, and actually everything appears to be working fine now. I swear this bit me every time I tried to use FF for months...

It must be a different port, otherwise localhost without a port number would work fine. Presumably 8080 or something, which is common for user apps to use since without privileges you can't open a port below 1024 normally.

But what port would firefox connect to, and how would it know?

Chrome doesnt do this either as far as I can tell.

> "Chrome autofills the port"

Sounds like they'd visited the URL in the past and had it in their history.

If you type it so often, just make a single character keyword for it, /goddamit/. Or gesture. Or global hotkey. And delete the wrong protocol and/or port entries from history. If you visit that site so often, I bet your URL Bar will suggest / autofill it for you just after typing 'l' or 'lo'.

Create a bookmark with a easily type-able name. The bar will autocomplete your bookmarks.

that's what FF Dev edition is for: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

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