Is it possible to left-align the URL in the Safari address bar?

As of Safari 8 on OS X Yosemite, URLs in the URL bar are displayed centered. This looks really nice, but I’m a web developer and I often need to change just part of an URL to test something. To do that, I need to click somewhere on the URL, reposition my cursor over the newly-left-aligned address, and then click again to place the insertion point.

Is there a way to get Safari to display URLs left-aligned all the time?

Not sure it's exactly what you want, but Cmd ⌘ L will select & left align, same as if you'd clicked it - so you could do it as you're mousing towards it.

This was irritating me also - I kept clicking on the padlock by accident and the security cert kept popping up.

In the end - I just changed the settings to show the full URL- therefore the link was generally taking up the full bar. You can do this by going to:

Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Show full website address

Hope this helps