Neat Firefox tricks, part 1

I'm not a computer whiz by any means. And that's why I figure there are probably people like me who don't know about some of the things that can be done with the Firefox web browser. Over the next week or so, I'll put a tip a day on here, and hopefully make someone else's surfing life a little easier or just neater. For those of you that already know this stuff, relax, believe me that someone else doesn't.

Trick 1) Search any site's search engine directly from your address bar, without going to that site first. This is great for searches you do often. For example, you want to search youtube? Go to youtube, and find the searchbox, click cursor so it's active, then rightclick, and you will see on the menu "Add a Keyword for this Search...". Click it and you will see this:



In the Name box, put whatever you want to call it, I chose 'youtube'. For Keyword, make something memorable and short, for me, 'y' (Name and Keyword can be the same). Click 'Add', and you're done! This info resides in your bookmarks, so you can organize it from there, or make a special folder for these shortcuts, and choose that from the dropdown menu in one of the 'Create in' arrows.

To use, type 'y' in the address bar at the top, a space, and whatever you want to search for:




Hit enter, and you're to the results page of your search!

since i went to the newest version i can not drag text to the tool bar. i reinstalled 2 but the support is dropping in dec. you have any idea what`s wrong...sorry i got to go for awhile.

I've got the latest version and if you mean dragging text to the search bar, I can do that fine. Odd. If you're highlighting the text you want, clicking so that it's 'set', and then dragging, it should work. Of course, you could just right click after highlighting and there will be the search engine of your choice in the menu items, which when clicked will open in new window or tab, however you have it set.

just click on a youtube bookmark and enter my term there! :rofl:

Still, that is neat.

But you only read the instructions once. Then you can do it any time, and theoretically save a step or two. Then you can spend all that time you save in the lounge...:P

Enter DU into bookmarks, then type something like: DU Olive Garden "Olive Garden sucks like Tom Cruise or Led Zepplin!" and have it post that in every thread mentioning Olive Garden... :rofl:

If you type "youtube tiger feet" in the address bar, it will search YouTube for "tiger feet" and take you to the first hit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7tpz3NAr6k

Similarly if you type "wikipedia democratic underground" into the address bar, it will take you straight to the Wikipedia entry for DU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Underground

If it doesn't know, it'll revert to your default search engine results. The above tip works with any sites search engine, no matter how obscure. Many websites just use a customized google search anyway.

Two sites I am constantly searching while hunting for music.