Firefox Quick Searches
By now most people are aware of Firefox Quick Searches (Keyword Searches) are and how to use them. In brief, they are a bookmark that you can access by using a keyword while passing additional information. The standard quick search is to search Google. I have mine assigned to “g“, the obvious one letter abbreviation. When I want to search Google for something, I type CTRL-L to get to the address bar, then type “g my search terms” (no quotes) and hit ENTER. Behind the scenes, Firefox takes my bookmark assigned to that keyword and replaces the string “%s” with whatever is typed after the keyword.
Not only are quick searches useful for searching the web for specific information, but they can be useful for interacting with other web sites. I use del.icio.us for online bookmarks with tagging. I found a set of quick searches tag allow me to search for things I’ve tagged but also to actually tag the current page I’m looking at. I find this much faster and more useful than bookmarklets or the del.icio.us extension for Firefox because I can use all from the keyboard.
The list below is the current list of quick searches that I use. To add one as a quick search, you’ll have to right-click and bookmark the link. Afterwards you have to go into the Bookmark Manager, find the bookmark, right-click to get properties, and enter the keyword. There are no restrictions in Firefox as to where quick search bookmarks must be located, but for my convenience I have a separate folder called “Quick Searches” that I have all of them in.
Searches
- g: Standard Google search. Most people have this one.
- imdb: Lookup on IMDB for movies, actors, etc.
- dict: Lookup the definition for a word. I also use it to get to the thesaurus which is available on the top of that page.
- q: Lookup a stock quote on Yahoo! Finance.
- acr: Lookup what an acronym could be from AcronymFinder.
- wiki: Lookup an article on Wikipedia.
- jd: Lookup the JavaDocs for a class from javadocs.org. I find this one to be very useful because it looks in both the J2SE and J2EE JavaDocs. Also you don’t need to provide the class package, simply type “jd Vector“. You can type the full class and package name to get to a specific class.
- amazon: Search for something on Amazon.
Interact with del.icio.us - both of these will need USERNAME replaced with your del.icio.us username.
- d: Search for bookmarks I’ve tagged with something. This was slightly modified from a version I found earlier (sorry, can’t locate original author to credit). I did make a modification that allows you to search for “d tag1 tag2” that will find bookmarks tagged with both tags.
- tag: Tag the current page with the given tags. While browsing a page, hit CTRL-L then type “tag interesting” and hit ENTER. It will tag whatever the current page is with “interesting” for you under del.icio.us. This was slightly modified from a version I found earlier (again, sorry that I can’t locate original author to credit). I did make a modification that allows you to tag pages with multiple tags. For instance, “tag tag1 tag2” will tag the current page with both tags.
Interact with Google Maps
- dirs: Get directions from your address to another address. You will have to edit this bookmark to put your address in as the starting address. Then you search for “dirs 456 fake street, springfield, ky” to get directions from your place to that address.
- map: Search for the given string on Google Maps. For instance, “map subway near san francisco, ca“.