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Faster Searching with Firefox
September 21, 2005
Statistics show that if you're reading this blog, you're more likely to be a Firefox Web Browser user than typical web surfers. Over 35% of our readers use Firefox or its Mozilla counterpart, while at the Intrapromote site, the number is less than 7%. Chances are you're very search-oriented, so I wanted to share some Firefox tricks that make my searching much more efficient.
I love toolbars, but I'm not crazy about the amount of screen real estate they consume. And even with Firefox's multiple tabs, I don't like always having one or more tabs devoted to search. I was poking around the Firefox docs and was happy to learn that the browser comes with built-in search capabilities, and additional capabilities that enable you to configure further searches.
The Address Bar in your browser (the field at the top of the browser that shows the URL of the site you're visiting) can become a de facto Google Search box simply by typing the term google, followed by your actual search query. The following graphic shows a query on everyone's mind:
Hit Return, and you'll get a Google page with query results for [britney spears baby], just as if you'd typed the query from the Google site.
But why do I have to type the entire word "google"? Couldn't we improve that a bit?
Turns out we can. This feature is based on one of Firefox's "Quick Searches" bookmarks. If you came of age with Microsoft products, it's unlikely you know about these, because in my opinion, they're much better labeled as tools or macros than bookmarks, and I until now, the coolest thing ever found while poking around a list of pre-installed browser bookmarks was 10,000 free hours of AOL.
I wanted to query Google simply by typing g followed by the query terms. To do so, follow these steps.
1. Open the Bookmarks Manager by clicking Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks...
2. Click the + sign to open up the Quick Searches folder.
3. Right-click "Google Quicksearch" and select "Properties"
4. In the "Keyword" field of the Properties box, replace google with g, as shown in the following graphic:
5. Hit "OK", then close the Bookmarks Manager.
That's all there is to it. Now just type g and your search terms into the Address Bar, hit Return, and you're instantly searching Google. But what about Yahoo and MSN? You'll have to create two new bookmarks in the Quick Searches folder. To create a new bookmark, right-click the Google Quicksearch page within the Quick Searches folder, and select New Bookmark.... In the resulting properties window, use the following code to create Quick Searches for Yahoo and MSN:
For Yahoo:
Name: Yahoo Quick Search
Location: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s
Keyword: y
For MSN:
Name: MSN Quick Search
Location: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=%s
Keyword: m
After you've created these Quick Searches, your current browser tab is a fast gateway to any major search engine. Just type g, y, or m, followed by your search terms, to query Google, Yahoo, or MSN, respectively.
Another helpful (and existing!) Quick Search is for Wikipedia. Use the letters wp, followed by your search terms, to query Wikipedia.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at September 21, 2005 01:15 PM
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