What's the advantage of the unified address/search bar?

This is what Apple says.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5364

Smart Searchfield.

You can type both search terms and web addresses into the field. As you begin to type, Safari automatically suggests a webpage match, called a Top Hit, and highlights it. Simply press the Enter key to select the Top Hit.

If the Top Hit is not the site you intended to visit, check the list of relevant suggestions, which are drawn from your preferred search engine, bookmarks and history. Click or use the arrow keys to select a search term or webpage, then press Enter.

In Safari select Safari > Preferences… > General (toolbar) and select the search engine you would like Safari to use. The choices are:

• Google
• Yahoo!
• Bing

Improving your searches

• Use quotation marks to find the exact phrase.

  If you are looking for an article about “Troubleshooting printer connections” put quotation marks around the phrase as shown.

• Confine your search to a specific website or subdomain of the website.
  • To confine your search results to a website, you can add site:[website] to your search.
  • For example, entering: "Troubleshooting printer connections" site:apple.com
    ...will show webpages only from apple.com.
• To confine your search results to a subdomain of a website, you can add site:[subdomain.website] to your search.

  For example, entering: "Troubleshooting printer connections" site:support.apple.com
  ...will show webpages of only the support section of the apple.com website.

• How to exclude a word(s) in your results.
  • To exclude words from your search results, use a hyphen ahead of the word(s) that you would like to exclude.
  • For example, entering: "Troubleshooting printer connections" site:support.apple.com -archive
    ...will search for the exact phrase of "Troubleshooting printer connections" on the Apple support website that do not contain the word "archive".

Streamlining of course, would you rather go back to four button just fof the Back/Front buttons to the left of the browser, remember there were those downward arrows to see back into your history from where you'd been so you could jump to a particular page, instead of having to keep clicking back, now there are two buttons and you just click and hold them to see the drop down menu.

It's a far sleeker system, in fact Chrome has gone further by allowing search terms to be applied to a URL before even hitting go e.g. "www.amazon.co.uk (press tab key) batman returns" --and you can search immediately for "batman returns" before you even get to Amazon!

So there's more to do, but really, it's all about UI streamlining/simplification while retaining the power of a traditional cluttered UI.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I see no advantages touted in this clip, only changes. And then, burying the ability to easily switch between search engines without going to Preferences makes it even worse, in my opinion. I regularly use different search engines, one after the other, and having it at the bottom of the search history was perfect.

I've posted my input on the Feedback link on the Apple site, and would recommend others to do the same. Certainly we can get an option to reconfigure it back to two separate windows. Without it, I'm going to have to move to Firefox pretty quickly.

OK, I've found something. It turns out if you click on the Magnifying Glass icon at the left of the unified field (where the disclosure triangle used to be), it functions like that triangle. You see Recent Searches as well as the search engine options. It seems to only come up automatically when the field is empty, but then takes two clicks to bring up when there is info in the field.

This does help somewhat, but doesn't deal with the unified field.

Fine, but others are only going to do the same if they feel the same and Apple weigh these things up carefully. Don't forget Safari is not the only browser to use Webkit, Chrome does too, and it's gained huge traction in market share, perhaps for a different audience ou might say, fine, again, but I think you'll probably be in the minority, especially as you *can* do what you want from the Preferences menu.

You could always comission a programmer to create an extension for you to achieve the switch between search engines in a manner that may well be even more handy i.e. via keyboard shortcuts like "1" for Goole, "2" for Yahoo...

Personally I think, from the number of key changes Apple made, as well their general attitude to rolling back on big decisions, they probably won't do it. With Apple it's best to accept what they've done, but you do have options, like going back to Safari 5, if you want.

In that case, I think Apple got everything right.

I'm not against progress, but "if it ain't broke...at least give us options." i really don't think they got it right. Most folks I know have gone to Chrome because of speed, not the unified field.

RIght now, my main option is to go to Firefox, which actually seems to run faster than Chrome in my world.

It's a shame because I like Safari, and have stood by it when other pooh-poohed it. Not sure I can now.

I's 4:41am, I have no sympathy.

Apologies to melican and dominic23, but it seems I got the wrong thread here. I was looking for some help and reasonable discussion about the latest version of Safari.