Prevent Chrome from adding ‘www.’ and ‘.com’ to ‘localhost’ on omnibox Alt+Enter

When I type in ‘localhost/path/to/file’ and hit Alt+Enter to open it in a new tab, Chrome seems to change it to ‘www.localhost.com/path/to/file’, which obviously fails to resolve. Is there any way to change Chrome’s behavior so as to open ‘localhost/path/to/file’ in a new tab?

In Chrome, click:

Tools – Options- Under the hood – Change Proxy setting and then click on LAN Setting

Check “Bypass proxy server for local address”

This now seems to be the new default behavior in Chrome.

Tested on Chrome Version 29.0.1547.65 (Xubuntu 13.04).