How to prevent Firefox converting 'localhost/*' URLs into search queries?

Question

Since upgrading from Firefox 3.6.x, my address bar has a quirk that never used to be there. When I type in, for example:

localhost/my_dir/index.php

Firefox turns it into a search query, my search engine is Google. To work around this (after forgetting I need to do this almost every time for FF), I must type in:

http://localhost/my_dir/index.php

This way, I am directed correctly to my localhost server. I don't need to do this for any other browser, and I thought this Q/A on URL trimming might change the behaviour, but it didn't.

Any ideas on how I can prevent 'localhost' from being turned into a search query?

Answer 1

1. Type about:config in the URL bar
2. In the filter search box, type browser.fixup.alternate.suffix
3. Double click this entry to edit it and remove: .com

Now your localhost files should work without having to add http://.

Answer 2

I know this is kind of a weird solution, but you could map localhost.com to 127.0.0.1 with your %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file.

Start notepad as administrator (by using the context menu on-top of it in the Start menu) and open the file %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, then add an entry like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost.com

to the end of the file. Save. Now you should be able to use localhost.com in place of localhost, which Firefox shouldn't complain about. Note that this works for practically any domain name you want, so you can make it shorter.