Tag Archives: amputation

keyword quick search bar shortcuts

You know that numb sensation you get when you are somewhere away from the internet, and you can no longer just find out the things you would normally have at your finger tips? You may not, perhaps this is an indication of just how much of my time is mediated by the web (I’m not an addict … but I do keep some extra internet hidden down the back of the sofa for emergencies).

Anyway, I have a similar sensation when using someone else’s web browser – my senses feel dulled, my reaction time slowed by the subtle differences in a web interface that I am unfamiliar with. One thing in particular I miss when away from my own browser are Firefox’s keyword quicksearches.

My most used are ? for wikipedia, here for searching the website I’m currently viewing, map to see where things are on a map, img & vid for google image and video searches, and various searches for my flickr, delicious and friendfeed accounts to help me recall things I’ve seen.

Keyword: ?
Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s

Keyword: ??
Location: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?search=%s

Keyword: here
Location: javascript:void(location.href='http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=site:'+location.href.split(%22/%22)[2]+'+%s&sourceid=firefox')

Keyword: map
Location: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=%s

Keyword: img
Location: http://images.google.com/images?q=%s

Keyword: vid
Location: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%s

Keyword: flickr
Location: http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=2&w=17306001%40N00&q=%s&m=text
(you’ll need to look up your own id to use here)

Keyword: del
Location: http://delicious.com/search?p=%s&chk=&fr=del_icio_us&lc=1&atags=&rtags=&context=userposts|noii|
(dito)

Keyword: ff
Location: http://friendfeed.com/search?required=q&q=%s&friends=noii
(since selling themselves to facebook, friendfeed’s search has been super slow and shitty)

A few others:

Keyword: last
Location: http://www.last.fm/search?q=%s&type=all

Keyword: hype
Location: http://hypem.com/search.php?q=%s

Keyword: whois
Location: http://www.domaintools.com/go/?service=whois&q=%s

Keyword: sch
Location: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%s

Keyword: boing
Location: http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&domains=boingboing.net&sitesearch=boingboing.net

Finally, for some sites like the movie database, you’ll need to go and right-click in their search box by hand to generate the correct keyword search.