Fifteen Firefox Quick Searches

If you're a Firefox user who eschews the mouse, then keyword Quick searches are for you. Give it a try: in Firefox, key up to the location bar (Windows: Alt-D, Mac: Cmd-L), type dict eschew and hit Enter. You'll be automagically transported to the Dictionary.com definition of "eschew" (to avoid, shun). That's a Quick search in action.

Firefox comes with the dict search pre-installed, along with the predictable google keyword search. But you can set up any number of Quick searches with keywords that map to useful search engines. Today's feature offers 15 useful Quick Searches which you can execute in Firefox without ever taking your fingers from the keyboard.

Note: the Firefox search box can also contain any number of engines. However, it's not as easy to get to this box and switch engines using only the keyboard as it is using Quick searches.

To set up a Quick search, go to any search engine page with an input box using Firefox, like say, the Flickr photo search page. To set up a Quick search for Flickr tags, right-click inside the tag search input box and choose "Add a Keyword for this Search..." like so:

Then, enter a title for the search and a keyword you'll use to execute it, like this:

Once you press the "Add" button, your Quick search is set up. Now, from the Firefox address bar, type flickrtag puppy to search Flickr tags for - you guessed it - puppies.

Now, you shouldn't have to go through all the work of setting up Quick searches manually. I've gone ahead and made my Quick search bookmarks available for download, which includes 15 keywords I use on a daily basis.

Here's how to get it installed:

1. Right-click on this Quick search bookmarks file and choose "Save Link As..." Place the file somewhere on your computer.


2. In Firefox, from the Bookmarks menu, choose "Manage Bookmarks."


3. From the Bookmarks Manager File menu, choose Import. Choose "Import Bookmarks from File." Browse to and open the file you just saved.

Now you've got a "Quick Searches" folder in your Bookmarks, which includes all sorts of keyword searches. For instance, lh google searches this blog for Google references; wikiped Richard Stallman transports you to the Stallman page on Wikipedia; thes easy looks up words with similar meanings to "easy" in a thesaurus.

See a full list of all the Quick searches included in this file:

Quick Searches

1. Acronym Finder Quick Search
   
   Type "acronym <acronym>" to look up what an acronym stands for in Acronym Finder. For example, "acronym WTF."


2. Amazon Quick Search
   
   Type "amazon <product name>" to look up an item on Amazon.


3. Dictionary.com Quicksearch
   
   Type "dict <word>" in the addressbar to perform a dictionary look-up.


4. Ebay Quick Search
   
   Type "ebay <item>" to find something up for auction at Ebay.


5. Flickr Quick Search
   
   Type "flickr <search term>" to search all the tags, titles and descriptions of images at photo-sharing site Flickr.


6. Froogle Quick Search
   
   Type "froogle <product name>" to look up a product on shopping search engine Froogle.


7. Google Maps Quick Search
   
   Type "map <address>" to get a Google map of a street address or location.


8. Google Image Quick Search
   
   Type "image <search term>" to find images that match using Google Image Search.


9. Technorati Quick Search
   
   Type "technorati <search term>" to see what weblogs are posting about a topic.


10. Thesaurus Quick Search
    
    Type "thes <word>" to find words with similar meanings in a thesaurus.


11. Urban Dictionary Quick Search
    
    Type "slang <expression>" to look up a slang expression in Urban Dictionary.


12. Wikipedia Quick Search
    
    Type "wikiped <person|place|thing>" to look it up in collaboratively-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia.


13. Yahoo! Creative Commons Quick Search
    
    Type "cc <word>" to find Creative Commons-licensed items available for reuse with Yahoo!'s CC search.


14. Yahoo! Local Quick Search
    
    Type "local <business>" to find a business listing with Yahoo! Local.
    
    **NOTE: this bookmark must be edited to work in your area. Replace 92037 in the URL with your zip code.

Customize your Quick searches using the Bookmarks manager (Bookmarks menu, Manage bookmarks.) Browse to the "Quick Searches" subfolder and choose Properties of any bookmark. Here you can change a keyword shortcut (say you want a Wikipedia search to map to "wiki" instead of "wikiped") or edit a URL. (The Yahoo! Local Search URL should be edited to include your zip code.)

Got any other search engines that would make a good Quick search? Let me know in the comments.

Happy searching!

Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarking

by Adam Pash

When Gina posted her favorite 15 Firefox Quick Searches, she used a Firefox feature which associates keywords with frequent web searches. But you can use bookmark keywords not only for web searches, but to navigate to your favorite sites and inner pages, and even launch bookmarklets without moving to your mouse.

Today I'll cover the fine art of browser bookmarking in conjunction with keyword shortcuts, and how I significantly cut down wasted browsing time with an intuitive keyword framework.

Note: Even though I'm writing from the perspective of a Firefox user, Firefox is certainly not the only browser that can add keywords to your bookmarks and favorites. In Opera, for example, you can create a "Nickname" for a bookmark that does the same thing.

Lay the groundwork

If you're using Firefox, first things first: You need to install the OpenBook Firefox extension. Yes, you need to - you can add keywords to your bookmarks in Firefox without OpenBook, but it's decidedly more of a pain in the ass, requiring a trip to the properties of each bookmark. OpenBook makes adding keywords to bookmarks trivial, meaning you'll be much more likely to set them up.

Once you've installed OpenBook, go to Tools -> Extensions and open your OpenBook options. You can tweak this however you want to, but be sure at the very least to check the Keyword textbox, which will allow you to create keyword shortcuts on the fly. Additionally, since I really don't ever click on my bookmarks anymore, I don't really have much need for organizing them; instead, I have all new bookmarks automatically dumped into a folder called Keywords (keeps things nice and tidy in my Bookmarks menu). You can see how I have it set up in the screenshot, but if you have your own preferences, feel free to tweak the OpenBook options however you like.

Once you've got OpenBook all set up, it's time to get busy.

Set up your favorites

I like to give all of my favorite web sites a one or two letter keyword. The process is very simple, but just because I like holding hands (I'm 6th grade that way), it might go a little something like this:

You visit this site and find out it's got your most favorite content in all the world. You don't want to have to type in that whole address thirty times every day, so instead you hit Ctrl-D (replace Ctrl with Cmd on Macs), type in a keyword of 'l' and hit enter. Now anytime you're ready to visit this site, you'll hit Ctrl-L (the keyboard shortcut for the address bar), type, 'l', and hit Enter. Easy, right?

Of course, first letters run out quickly, so in the off chance that there's another web site that begins with an "L" that you like more than this site (say it ain't so!), you can add letters based on other intuitive methods (for example, this site acker could be easily remembered as 'wd' or 'ga').

Drilling down

Since web sites are generally set up in a directory structure, I like to add keywords that help me drill down to other commonly-used pages on the same site. For example, here I keep a lot of internal communication, lists, schedules, and other such fun productivity porno in a wiki. I've set up the Wiki homepage to a keyword of 'ww' in my browser. But that just gets me to the home page of the wiki. If I want to go to the page where I keep a list of feature ideas, I type in 'wwf'. For content schedule, I type 'wwc', and so on.

You get the idea. This sort of drilling down can go on indefinitely, though you obviously won't want to allow things to get to far out of hand before you just create a new, shorter keyword. I normally set up my keywords to match the first letter of each word I'm looking for so that it's easy to remember and type all of my shortcuts in one to four keystrokes.

Keyword search and the %s variable

Gina has already done an excellent feature on Firefox quick searches, but I'm going to delve a little deeper into keyword quick searches so that you can create your own keyword search when the simple right-click -> Add keyword search... method doesn't work.

For example, the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn't play nice with the regular "Add keyword search" dialog. However, if you take a look at the URL of any word on M-W, you'll find that they all look like this:

http://m-w.com/dictionary/<word>/

If we just had a way that we could insert any word we wanted in place of <word>, we'd be set. Luckily, Firefox provides a very handy little %s variable, which holds everything you type after your keyword. To create a keyword bookmark search for M-W, then, you'd hit Ctrl-D and paste the following into the URL field:

http://m-w.com/dictionary/%s/

Assign a keyword of 'mw', and any time you type mw productivity into your address bar, the word "productivity" will replace the %s variable.

Keyword your bookmarklets

Don't be shy about adding keyword shortcuts to your favorite bookmarklets. For example, I'm absolutely crazy about the GMailThis! bookmarklet (it was actually the basis of my Bookmarking with Gmail feature). If I'm on a page I want to email to someone, all it takes is Ctrl-L, 'gmt', and Enter.

Sync your shortcuts across browsers

Finally, if you've set up a great keyword bookmarking system, you're going to want to sync your bookmarks on every computer you use. To accomplish this, I prefer the FoxMarks Firefox extension.

How do you speed up your browsing?

I want to point out that there's really no genius in what I've described here - many of you may already have a similar method, or perhaps another, more groundbreaking method for speeding up your browsing. If you do, I'd love to hear about it in the comments here.

Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts List (PDF)

I had so much fun assembling the Windows XP Keyboard Shortcuts, and they proved to be so popular, that I put together another one just for Firefox. In addition to the shortcuts, I included additional reference information for configuring Firefox<.







Download the Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts tri-fold. Just as with the latest version of the Windows XP Keyboard Shortcuts, do not forget to print double-sided on a single sheet of paper. Also be sure to validate the driver is set to print in landscape.

Search shortcuts for Firefox

Everyone who has ever used my computer, even for a moment, has taken a particular liking to my search shortcuts — most notably gg, my shortcut to Google.

I'm doing Google searches all the time. Whenever I have a question about anything, I don't hesitate to grab my laptop and look it up on Google. If I had to go to Google.com, wait for the site to load, and click in the search box before I could type in my query and search, it would slow me down.

After reading that, you probably think I'm crazy. But yes, that little bit of extra work would slow me down. I search a lot!

So what is my more efficient solution? It's simple: Firefox bookmark keywords. If you don't understand them, I recommend that you go look at the LifeHacker article about them.

I've published some of my more useful search shortcuts here. Firefox users can simply right-click on the link and choose Bookmark This Link. Then, go into Organize Bookmarks and add keywords to them. I also recommend grouping the search shortcuts into a folder called Search to keep some sanity in the Bookmark menu.

Google Search - keyword: gg
Google Maps - keyword: map
Google Image Search - keyword: img
IMDB Lookup - keyword: imdb
Dictionary - keyword: dc
Thesaurus - keyword: th
Wikipedia - keyword: wiki

After saving the bookmarks, don't forget to add the keywords. The shortcuts are useless without them. Oh, and if you don't use Firefox, you're out of luck.

With the shortcuts, you can now go to the address bar and type gg britney spears to learn everything you want to know about annoying pop singers. But that would be useless.

More useful would be, when you're looking at the web site for a local sushi restaurant and you see their address on the page, you could copy it from the page and paste it into the address bar, typing map before it, so you have something like map 401 N Michigan Ave Chicago. Just a few keystrokes gets you the directions you're looking for.