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February 02, 2005
Firefox — Roll Your Own QuickLaunches and QuickSearches
03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (8) ~ Firefox & PC - Customizing
Man, just when you think you have everything figured out with Firefox, you learn about something new. In fact, sometimes you feel like you’re the last one to learn about it. What “new” features of Firefox am I talking about? That’d be QuickLaunches and QuickSearches (I sort of made those CamelCase words up).
Creating a QuickLaunch
For sites you visit a lot, it’s great to have an easy-to-remember letter or short word that when typed into the address bar tells Firefox to launch a particular site. For example, I have Firefox set up to launch the front page of Yahoo! by simply typing “yhoo” into the address bar and hitting return (actually, I type “cntrl+L” to set the focus on the address bar, and then type “yhoo” and return — no mousing required).
To set the keyword for a site, browse to that site and bookmark it. Then right-click on the bookmark and select Properties from the context menu. This reveals the Properties menu. Type in the keyword you would like associated with that site into the Keyword field, then click the OK button. Easy!
Creating a QuickSearch
But wait, there’s more. QuickSearches allow you to not only tell Firefox to launch a site based on a keyword, but also automatically search on a query. For example, let’s say that I want to search on the term “whatever” in Yahoo!. I have Firefox set up so that all I need to do is type “y whatever” into the address bar and hit return to load this page.
To set up a QuickSearch, you must bookmark the results page for a search engine, substitute in “%s” in place of the query and add your keyword. If this doesn’t make sense, go here to see how the QuickSearch bookmarks for several common search engines are formatted (and don’t forget the keyword).
I have several dozen QuickLanches and QuickSearches set up in Firefox. This saves me a lot of time mousing around and has just about eliminated my use of the search box (located in the upper right corner).
Tip
Don’t just randomly place your keyworded bookmarks into your bookmarks list. If you do, you’ll lose track of them making it almost impossible to look up a forgotten keyword. To solve this problem with Firefox’s weak bookmark managing system, I created a folder called “Keywords,” and created all of my QuickSearches and QuickLaunches within this folder (even if I end up duplicating bookmarks found somewhere else in my bookmarks list). In addition, I add “(=Keyword)” to the end of the Name field in the bookmark’s Properties menu (e.g., the Yahoo! bookmark name field reads “Yahoo! - Search (=y)”). If I forget a keyword, I can open the Keywords folder to see a complete list of my keywords.
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Comments
OK, this stuff is very cool. I particularly like the quick search thing - always thought it was a pain to not only have to highlight the search box but also to select the search engine. This is much better!
Posted by: Jeff at February 2, 2005 05:12 PM