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Custom Firefox search shortcuts
I’ve come across a little trick that isn’t complicated at all, but saves me a ton of time searching through CPAN. You can add a custom search shortcut that allows you to skip typing search.cpan.org, then typing your search term, replacing it with something as simple as p Search::Term in the address bar.
To do this, first do a search on the site you’re interested in and bookmark the results. Then open the Bookmark Manager and click properties for the new bookmark.
You’ll need to change two things. First, add the keyword that you want to use. In my case, I chose p to stand for perl, but you can pick any letter or phrase you want. Then replace your search term in the bookmarked address (highlighted) with %s. Save the bookmark, and enjoy your new shortcut!
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Copyright 2006-2010 Ted Carnahan. Except where noted, the content of this site is licensed under CC-SA-BY.
Thanks for the tip, Ted. And, btw I noticed you’re using Ubuntu in those screenshots, right?
Ubuntu FTW!
Yep, we’re an all-Ubuntu household. The only Windows machine I still have is a homemade picture frame PC made out of an old Compaq laptop. It runs Windows 98SE, but only because I haven’t gotten around to Ubuntu-ing it.
You can also add a keyword (i.e. make quick searches) by right-clicking the form box you’d enter your query words into and choosing “Add a keyword for this search…”
This essentially just automatically places %s as the search term and open the bookmark popup.
Lifehacker has a couple of good articles that explain some neat details and provide a good set of useful (downloadable?) quick searches.
[...] Helping in my Flickr search was a Firefox short cut that I’d read about. I forgot to bookmark the original post where I learned about this shortcut (dumb, dumb, dumb!) This blog post by Ted Carnahan, though, explains how you can use an interesting feature of Firefox bookmarks to help simplify searches you regularly perform on sites like Flickr, YouTube and a host of others. The long and the short of it is that now if I want to search Flickr using Firefox (or Flock) I can just type fcc and a space and then the term I want to search in the address window of my browser and bingo! I have my personalized search of Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licensed photos. Yippee! Want a photo of an apple–I’ll just type “fcc apple” and viola–lots of photos that have been tagged with apple. I didn’t have to be in Flickr already, pretty neat. [...]
[...] Search shortcuts – on searchable sites, you can bookmark sites in Firefox you search on a lot and make shortcuts easily such as “goog search item goes here” [...]
I am actually using this and I must say, it helps me to make my work easier. Thanks for sharing this.
You're welcome. I've used this technique a number of different times now. Even though I'm not a professional Perl guy anymore, creating these shortcuts is a huge timesaver if you do repetitive searching all day long. Enjoy!