Using keyword searches

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 21:38, 24 October 2005 by Asqueella (talk | contribs) (→‎See also: Tweaking the keyword search to open another page when no search terms specified [could use better wording])
Jump to navigationJump to search
This article applies to Firefox and Mozilla Suite.

In Firefox and Mozilla Suite you can specify keywords for bookmarks by filling in the “Keyword” field in the bookmark’s Properties. When you type the keyword into the Location Bar and hit [Enter], the keyword will be replaced with the bookmarked URL. For example, bookmarking http://google.com/, giving it a keyword of “g”, and typing “g” into the Location Bar will take you to Google.

What makes keywords very powerful is that if you add a “%s” at some place in your bookmark’s URL, it will be replaced by the words you type in after the keyword. (These are sometimes called “Quicksearches”.) For example, if we were to modify the bookmark mentioned above so that it pointed to “http://google.com/?q=%s”, we can type “g mozilla” into the Location Bar to arrive at “http://google.com/search?q=mozilla”.

Default searches

By default, Mozilla Firefox comes with several bookmarks with keywords defined. They’re located in the “Quick Searches” folder in the default bookmarks.

Bookmark Name Keyword Bookmark URL
Google Quicksearch google http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
Dictionary.com Quicksearch dict http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s
Stock Symbol Quicksearch quote http://www.google.com/search?q=stocks:%s
Wikipedia Quicksearch wp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
Urban Dictionary slang http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%s

Creating bookmarks with keywords

In Mozilla Firefox, you can simply right-click in a search field on a web page and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search.” This will pop up a dialog for you to add a bookmark name and keyword.

You can also create it manually:

  1. Do a search on the site you want to add a quicksearch to.
  2. Bookmark the page you are brought to (the results page).
  3. Open the Properties dialog for your new bookmark.
  4. In your bookmark’s URL (the Location field), find and replace what you searched for with %s (If it does not appear, you cannot use a quicksearch here)
  5. Add a keyword

Note: Mozilla Suite users can use the “Bookmarks → File Bookmark...” feature and edit bookmark’s properties at the moment of its creation.

See also

External links