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.

C-SPAN has a great web site with lots of archived material going back a few months to many years. So, if you miss something important, you can catch it later on C-SPAN. Here’s their mission statement,

C-SPAN is a public service created by the American cable television industry:

To provide C-SPAN’s audience access to the live gavel-to-gavel proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and to other forums where public policy is discussed, debated and decided—all without editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of points of view;

To provide elected and appointed officials and others who would influence public policy a direct conduit to the audience without filtering or otherwise distorting their points of view;

To provide the audience, through the call-in program, direct access to elected officials, other decision makers and journalists on a frequent and open basis;

To employ production values that accurately convey the business of government rather than distract from it; and to conduct all other aspects of its operations consistent with these principles.

And some interesting statistics,

Number of U.S. homes with cable and satellite that receive MTV: 83,400,000

Number of U.S. homes that receive C-SPAN: 85,000,000

MSNBC’s rank among U.S. cable television networks, based on distribution: 34

C-SPAN’s rank, based on distribution: 8

Average weekly audience for West Wing, 2000-2001 season: 17,012,000

Estimated number of people watching C-SPAN each week: 28,500,000

Check it out.