Google Chrome expands Omnibox with API

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The Chrome omnibox is one of the most distinctive features of Google’s open source browser. While Mozilla Firefox has it’s ‘Awesome Bar’ which kinda/sorta is a similar idea, Chrome’s Omnibox gets rid of the search dialogue box that Firefox has and puts everything into the Omnibox.

The Omnibox approach is a powerful one – for Google – and now it’s going to be powerful for developers too, thanks to an Omnibox API.

“The omnibox API lets extension developers add their own keyword command
to the omnibox,” Matt Perry, Software Engineer at Google wrote in a blog post. “When the user types a query prefixed by this keyword,
the extension can suggest potential completions and react to the user’s
input.”

That’s cool and it’s also long overdue in my opinion.