quick searches in Firefox

One of the things I really like about Opera is the ease of searching on Google. To search for information about walruses, type ‘g walruses’ in the URL field and you’re there. Using Firefox, I used to type ‘google.com’ in the URL field which would take me to Google’s web site and I would then type ‘walruses’ in the text field and hit the search Google button.

I just discovered that you can use the Opera solution in Firefox with a minor tweak. In the bookmarks that come with Firefox there’s a folder called ‘Quick Searches.” That folder has a bookmark called Google Quicksearch which allows you to type ‘google’ in the URL field followed by the search phrase. That’s already faster than what I was doing, but in the properties of that bookmark there is a keyword field which had ‘google’ in it. I changed the value to ‘g’ instead and now it’s just as fast to search on Google using Firefox as it is in Opera.

Comments

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  1. Isn’t there a searchbox in Firefox next to the place where you type the URL? You can add several search engines to the pulldown menu and use whichever one you want as the default. I use Google most of the time, but it’s very easy to add engines for Amazon.com and IMDB.

    Comment by Justin on March 8, 2005 @ 12:27 am
  2. Justin: You’re right, but I never use that. I don’t like that it stores previous searches because when I want to search for something else I have to delete the text from the previous search.

    I just hit Ctrl-L to get into the URL box, so it’s quick and I don’t even have to use the mouse.

    Comment by dan on March 8, 2005 @ 12:42 am
  3. I just do a ctrl+k and Firefox takes me to the Search Box on the top Right and i need not even delete the old search text it is replaced by default. I still use the Keyword shortcut ( the one you explained here ) for Linux specific searches( http://www.google.com/linux ).

    PS: Infact in the new Firefox u have the Keyword shortcut in the right-click menu itself, for example just go to http://www.google.com/linux and right click on the search box on te page and you will find a “Add a Keyword for this search…” in the drop down list.

    Comment by Thejaswi on March 8, 2005 @ 2:27 am
  4. I do the same thing Thejaswi does – Ctrl-K gets me right there.

    Comment by Meredith on March 8, 2005 @ 9:18 am
  5. Thejaswi: Thanks for the tip, that’s good to know.

    Comment by dan on March 8, 2005 @ 9:51 am
  6. I just like to ask about how to delete previous searches in yahoo search engine…Im using mozilla firefox as a default browser and Linux as operating system. I find it hard to delete previous searches now unlike when im using MS. how is it?pls help.

    Comment by lisha on March 8, 2006 @ 12:35 am

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