wildcard shortcut really annoying
 

I work on many websites and have a lot running locally. At the moment I have around 40 websites running on vhosts on my apache server, which all have ServerNames in the format [url]http://local-[/url][I]modulename[/I]

If I enter something into my location bar like local-aisv (which is a typical name) then I want to go to [url]http://local-aisv/[/url] not to [url]http://www.local-aisv.com/[/url]

I try deleting the wildcard entry in the search, but it keeps returning. I would be happy if I could make my own entry such as local-* -> [url]http://local-%@/[/url] , however this does not seem to work. I know I could work around this by entering a shortcut for every vhost, but that's a pain and there should be a better way. Is there one?

Yes, there's a better way: you can simply edit the default (wildcard) entry. It sounds like you'd want to change it to "http://%@/".

Hope this helps!

OK cool, I have a feeling I tried that before and it reverted but maybe it's only when I actually delete the wildcard entry that it comes back.

The only (minor) problem with this though is that the functionality of assuming [url]www.%@.com[/url] is otherwise a good thing. I don't have a locally hosted omnigroup for example, so if I type in omnigroup it would be good if it went to [url]www.omnigroup.com[/url]. On the one hand I think well I can't have my cake and eat it too, but on the other hand other browsers deal with this with no problems (presumably by trying to resolve the address before deciding to add .com). As I said this is a minor issue, as for most of my regular sites I have a keyword anyway set up with my bookmark.

Thanks for your help :) (I'm very impressed by the speed of your response btw!)

Is there any way to deactivate this shortcut completely? If I blank its fields I can delete it, but it's automatically recreated whenever I restart OmniWeb. I tab-complete URLs a lot, and having the shortcut (that I never, ever use) sitting at the top of the suggestion list and requiring an extra tab to get past slows me down and drives me crazy.

It's on all the time right now unfortunately....

[QUOTE=dangerous;17240]The only (minor) problem with this though is that the functionality of assuming [url]www.%@.com[/url] is otherwise a good thing. I don't have a locally hosted omnigroup for example, so if I type in omnigroup it would be good if it went to [url]www.omnigroup.com[/url]. On the one hand I think well I can't have my cake and eat it too, but on the other hand other browsers deal with this with no problems (presumably by trying to resolve the address before deciding to add .com). As I said this is a minor issue, as for most of my regular sites I have a keyword anyway set up with my bookmark.[/QUOTE]

I hate this "feature". If someone enters in an invalid URL, tell them. This is how I'd like to see the feature work: when I type in a URL that doesn't resolve to a valid hostname, OmniWeb should take me to a locally-generated webpage that gives me several options. Something like:

The URL you entered "blahblah" is not valid.

1. "Did you mean "blahblah.com" or "blahblah.net"?
2. Search [default search engine] for "blahblah".
3. None of the above, go to my homepage.

Of course this feature should be optional, so that users who know what they're doing just get an error page stating that the hostname could not be resolved.

I hate that the browser developers try to guess what I wanted to do, as it's almost always wrong and the auto-redirect "feature" has lead to a huge increase in domain-name typo squatting and other less-than-desireable internet behavior.

IE7 finally switched to auto-completing the www. & .com by default. It still does a local check first.

I think all browsers auto-complete the "http://" part. I remember back when they didn't. Simplicity is good.