5 Minute Tips General Searching with Firefox Keywords | Searching with Firefox Keywords |
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| Sunday, 23 January 2005 | |
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Firefox has many built in search features such as search bars and quick access to Google's I'm Feeling Lucky using the location bar. What appeals to me is how Firefox uses their keyword feature with any site that has a search text box. (Includes online keyword search tutorial.)
Although most people are familiar with the large search engines, there are many sites we visit that have a search box. Some of these sites we use frequently. Others are ones we appreciate, but don't always remember the name or URL. Using the keyword feature in Firefox, you can create an easy way to remember and execute a search for these websites using the Firefox address bar. Creating Firefox Keyword Search BookmarksAs example, we've written hundreds of articles but they're not all on the production site. Before Firefox, if I needed to find the article on "Slap", I would navigate to our site and enter the term in our search textbox. Now, I can type "tas slap" in Firefox's location bar. In this example, "tas" is my search keyword and "slap" is my search term. I could enter more than one term or even use quotes if the site's search engine supported this feature. Firefox will map my keyword to the proper URL and submit my search term. If you think about how you search the web, I suspect there are many places where this feature could help. I've used it to search for trips, product alerts, archived newsletters, forms and so on. I've even had success mapping keywords on pages that have multiple search textboxes like Yahoo! To create a search keyword for a site, 1. Open Firefox and navigate to the site. Make sure the site has a search textbox.  2. Place your mouse in the search textbox and right-click. 3. From the menu, select Add a Keyword for this Search  4. Enter the Name and Keyword in the Add Bookmark box and click OK. Tip: Try to use a keyword that is short and reminds you of the search.  5. In Firefox's location bar, type your keyword followed by a space and the search terms. In our example, "trip" is my keyword and I'm looking for costa rica.  6. Press Enter to see the results page.  The advantage of these search keywords is you don't have to navigate to the specific site. Your search keyword will handle all the navigation from the location bar.
2 Minute Firefox Search Keywords Tutorial Related Articles Introduction to Firefox Preferences
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 April 2007 ) |
