Firefox: Keyword Search Sat, Aug 18. 2007
For the first in this series, I'll talk about Keyword Search. This is actually a built-in feature of firefox, made more
useful by an extension called 'Smart Search'.
The feature is explained on the keyword searches. That page explains in in a rather odd way, so I will
try to do it better.
First, tell Firefox to pull up the properties of an existing bookmark. (Right click on it, choose properties.) You see
that 'Keyword:' field that has nothing in it?
Well, it's not very well known, but if you put a word there, Firefox will go there when you type in word in as a URL.
For example, I have a bookmark to Slashdot, and the keyword is '/.' So I can hit Ctrl+L, /.ENTER and, blam, I'm at
slashdot. When I show people this why usually gasp as they realize their bookmarks have just turned into a 'command
line' of sorts and run off to name a dozen of them. It's incredibly useful...I used to have a dozen very very short
bookmarks on my links bar, and now I have none, because I don't need any, I can get to them with two or three
characters.
But wait, there's more.
If you have a %s in the URL, Firefox will replace it with whatever else you have in the line. For example, if you, for some unknown reason, commonly type the URL to view PHP functions, you can make a bookmark with the Keyword 'php' and the URL http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ref.%s.php, and then you type 'php pfsockopen' and you'll end up at http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.pfsockopen.php, like magic. But typing out the URL manually is crazy. The correct way to use keyword URLs with a substitution is with an existing form. Find a form. Luckily, there's probably one already on this very page, to the side, the 'Quicksearch'. Right click in the textbox. Choose 'Add a keyword for this search'. (Don't worry, you don't have to actually finish making the bookmark, this isn't some clever plan to make you bookmark this site.) You're now in an 'add bookmark' dialog, except with a keyword box. But, more importantly, Firefox took the URL it would have gone to it if you'd submitted the form, and replaced the form selection with the %s, and is bookmarking that, so if you set a keyword, it's the same as navigating to this page and typing it in the box. (Sadly, though, it doesn't seem to show said URL in this box, so this demonstration is a bit pointless.) What's even cooler is that Firefox took any other form elements as-is. The form here didn't have any, but if you're somewhere with some 'advanced search' with a dozen checkboxes and dropdown and some other text fields, and right-click on to make a keyword search, it will remember the state of all of those in the bookmark.
A really useful thing to do with this is to get rid of your search box. Entirely. Go to each search engine you use, make a keyword search, like 'g' for Google and 'y' for Yahoo! and whatever. Then, to search, you just type 'g things you want to search' and, bam, there you are. You want driving directions? Go to a mapping site, put your home address in 'From', right-click in 'To' and make a keyword search for 'drive', and magically you can type 'drive street address' and get directions. Remember it stores anything in other text-fields and checkboxes and all that stuff, any of the 'options' for the search. Another useful thing is, as I mentioned above, quick referencing bookmarks. If you use the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' with your webmail, work homepage, weather, etc, consider going up and putting a keyword in each of them, like 'mail', 'work', 'weather', etc. Eventually you'll get so used to just typing them that you'll turn the toolbar off. And remember, getting up to the URL bar is Ctrl+L. Don't waste time mousing up there. There's only one short-coming to all this. You can only do this all from the URL bar. What if you want to search a word or phrase in a webpage? You can do that using the search engines in the search engine list from a right-click, but not the keyword search searches. Unless you get Smart Search. [Local Remote Site] This lets you hilight and use keyword searches from right-click.
If you have a %s in the URL, Firefox will replace it with whatever else you have in the line. For example, if you, for some unknown reason, commonly type the URL to view PHP functions, you can make a bookmark with the Keyword 'php' and the URL http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ref.%s.php, and then you type 'php pfsockopen' and you'll end up at http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.pfsockopen.php, like magic. But typing out the URL manually is crazy. The correct way to use keyword URLs with a substitution is with an existing form. Find a form. Luckily, there's probably one already on this very page, to the side, the 'Quicksearch'. Right click in the textbox. Choose 'Add a keyword for this search'. (Don't worry, you don't have to actually finish making the bookmark, this isn't some clever plan to make you bookmark this site.) You're now in an 'add bookmark' dialog, except with a keyword box. But, more importantly, Firefox took the URL it would have gone to it if you'd submitted the form, and replaced the form selection with the %s, and is bookmarking that, so if you set a keyword, it's the same as navigating to this page and typing it in the box. (Sadly, though, it doesn't seem to show said URL in this box, so this demonstration is a bit pointless.) What's even cooler is that Firefox took any other form elements as-is. The form here didn't have any, but if you're somewhere with some 'advanced search' with a dozen checkboxes and dropdown and some other text fields, and right-click on to make a keyword search, it will remember the state of all of those in the bookmark.
A really useful thing to do with this is to get rid of your search box. Entirely. Go to each search engine you use, make a keyword search, like 'g' for Google and 'y' for Yahoo! and whatever. Then, to search, you just type 'g things you want to search' and, bam, there you are. You want driving directions? Go to a mapping site, put your home address in 'From', right-click in 'To' and make a keyword search for 'drive', and magically you can type 'drive street address' and get directions. Remember it stores anything in other text-fields and checkboxes and all that stuff, any of the 'options' for the search. Another useful thing is, as I mentioned above, quick referencing bookmarks. If you use the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' with your webmail, work homepage, weather, etc, consider going up and putting a keyword in each of them, like 'mail', 'work', 'weather', etc. Eventually you'll get so used to just typing them that you'll turn the toolbar off. And remember, getting up to the URL bar is Ctrl+L. Don't waste time mousing up there. There's only one short-coming to all this. You can only do this all from the URL bar. What if you want to search a word or phrase in a webpage? You can do that using the search engines in the search engine list from a right-click, but not the keyword search searches. Unless you get Smart Search. [Local Remote Site] This lets you hilight and use keyword searches from right-click.
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