And when you do eventually reach any of them via manually prepending 'http://', they make the 'http://' not visible in the bar. What confusing signaling!
Hint for Chrome: if I'm appending a port and the DNS name exists I probably don't want to Google it.
Their goal is to treat the query as search, and then try to detect if a host named "internalserver" exists. If so, Chrome displays a banner saying "do you want to visit internalserver/". So they don't have to delay the search until the probe finishes, thus it never automatically make it work without another click.
Personally I don't like it either, so I usually type "internalserver/" (with a tailing slash) to skip the search.
I always assumed they didnt make this easier so my mum doesn't go to almostBank:8000
if you go to host ports a lot i.e localhost you can spend a quick search to the sqlite DB for your preferences to make l<tab>:<port> expand out.
u have to edit the SQL. they "patch" the UI so it doesn't accept just arbitrary string patterns to tab complete but only URLs.
This script is made as a reference after I'd already done the setting so assume it needs editing to work.
Keyword: l, URL: localhost:%s
Then it works how you're describing with l<tab> and input the port. I personally define all the different versions of my servers that way so v1<enter> goes to something like internalserver:9001, v2<enter> goes to internalserver:9002, etc.
This script is made as a reference after I'd already done the setting so assume it needs editing to work.
In recent versions of Chrome, you can right-click the bar and choose "Always show full URLs" to fix that particular stupidity.
For something you do dozens of times a day even a tiny gain adds up over time.
I guess I'll just accept the flaws that come with it.