Firefox quick searches

December 25th, 2006, under addon, browsers, firefox, internet, quick-searches

I don’t like the idea of a separate search box in my browser. Instead, I much prefer conducting my searches from the address bar itself. I previously used YubNub, but the YubNub server has in the past few months been down rather often. So, I thought of switching to using the Firefox quick search feature instead, but was rather surprised to find that no one has compiled an extensive list of quicksearches that I could simply copy to my browser. I therefore made one, myself.

What is this?

Firefox quick searches (also known as smart keywords) basically allow you to use the address bar of your browser to search the Internet. There are a few quick searches in your browser as a default: typing in dict vanilla should for example give you the definition of vanilla as found in dictionary.com. This, in my opinion, is a much faster way of searching the Internet than is the use of individual search boxes.

The problem, of course, is that Firefox comes with only a handful of pre-defined searches. The official way of creating new ones is also rather slow and clumsy. What we therefore need is a single file that one can simply import to Firefox. This is exactly what I made after I was inspired by Lifehacker’s Fifteen Firefox Quick Searches post. The result is presented below.

How to use it?

Save or copy-paste this Quick search bookmarks file to your hard drive
In Firefox, open the Bookmarks menu and choose “Organize Bookmarks…”
When in the Bookmarks Manager, open the File menu and choose “Import…”.
Select “From File” and click “Next”.
Select the quick search bookmarks file you just downloaded, and click “Open”.

You should now see a new folder called “Shortcuts” in your Bookmarks. That’s where all the quicksearches are contained. You are good to go!

Examples: g Prince will make a Google search for “Prince”; gt http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/ will use Google translator tools to translate the Spanish Wikipedia’s front page into English; rot Seven Samurai will make a Rotten Tomatoes search for “Seven Samurai”.

Why so many of them?

The list currently includes over 300 items. You may not need all of them, but they shouldn’t make your Firefox any slower or anything. I originally came up with a list of a little over 100 items when I compiled it just for myself, but then thought that if I publish this, I might just as well go the extra mile and add searches that others might be using.

List of quick searches

The following is a full list of quick searches (smart keywords) and other shortcuts included. If you would like something to be added here, or see errors, leave a comment to this post and I’ll see to it.

About the Amazon and Allposters searches

The Amazon and Allposters searches use my associate IDs (which means that every purchase made from those searches makes me a few cents). This is because the primary function of this list is to allow me to import the quicksearches from one computer to another, and I want to use my own Amazon and Allposters associate IDs so that when I buy something, I end up getting the items a bit cheaper. If you don’t want me to benefit from your searches (even if it won’t cost you any extra or in any way invade your privacy), simply replace the Amazon entries with the following:

<dt><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s” shortcuturl=”am”>[am] Amazon.com</a> <dt><a href=”http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s” shortcuturl=”amca”>[amca] Amazon.ca</a> <dt><a href=”http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s” shortcuturl=”amde”>[amde] Amazon.de</a> <dt><a href=”http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s” shortcuturl=”amfr”>[amfr] Amazon.fr</a> <dt><a href=”http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s” shortcuturl=”amjp”>[amjp] Amazon.co.jp</a> <dt><a href=”http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s” shortcuturl=”amuk”>[amuk] Amazon.co.uk</a>

As for the Allposters searches, I don’t know what the URL is supposed to be for non-affiliate searches.

Sorry about the hassle there.

7 Responses

Comments

Jonathan Aquino
December 25th, 2006 (permalink)

Vili - My apologies for the YubNub downtime. Things have been stable of late.
vili
December 26th, 2006 (permalink)

Jonathan - I don’t think you need to apologise at all. Yubnub is still one of the best things to happen to the web in the recent years.
Mitch
December 26th, 2006 (permalink)

Very nice list!
mherskovitz
December 27th, 2006 (permalink)

This is very useful. It would be helpful if the list could be configured for printing. I have copied and printed it but it ends up being 6 pages long. By configuring it properly you could condense the list into one or two pages making it that much more useful. In any event, thanks for your work. mh
vili
December 27th, 2006 (permalink)

Glad you enjoyed it, mherskovitz.

I would imagine it shouldn’t be too difficult to just copy-paste the information from either the page or the file, and do the formatting in a word processor? Or are you after something else?
Risto
December 28th, 2006 (permalink)

Thank you very much. Great list. Especially web page translations are very fast with these shortcuts.

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Firefox quick searches

7 Responses

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Jonathan Aquino

vili

Mitch

mherskovitz

vili

Risto

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