Hey thanks, with the referenced script I was able to fully restore the old behavior.Normally I don't like messing around at this level, but now I'm set until Firefox maybe reverts this change.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who sometimes uses the search bar as a "shortcut" to open a blank page of different websites and start from there. Sometimes I want to specify some search parameters before I enter the search term. I hope they bring this...