Friday, November 11, 2005
Firefox Quicksearch
OK, on with the post...
One of the great features of Firefox, the superb open source browser, is that it has a feature called 'Quicksearch'. This lets you type in something like:
g robotron
in the address bar and it expands automagically into a Google search for your query. This is pretty nifty, and Firefox comes with support for other sites, too, like Wikipedia and Dictionary.com.
On its own this would be useful, but the kind Firefox chaps have made it possible to add to the built-in selection of search sites. For example, my favourite search engine at the moment is the beta of Previewseek. To add this as a Quicksearch, I went to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks in Firefox, right-clicked on the Quick Searches folder and selected New Bookmark... Then it was just a case of adding the relevant details:
Name: Previewseek Quicksearch
Location: http://beta.previewseek.com/?query=%s
Keyword: ps
Description: Type "ps
Note that the "%s" indicates where your search term will be entered.
It's a shame that this feature isn't more 'discoverable' and easier to extend, but it's a great boon when you get used to the shortcuts.
One other thing, to speed things up further, use Ctrl+L to get to the address bar without taking your hands off the keyboard. Also, you can enter a search against your default search engine (Google, unless you've changed it) by using the Ctrl+K shortcut - this will either put your cursor in the search bar if you have it on your toolbar, or pop up a little search window for you.
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