Browser search box – do you use it? really?
You know what I mean, the search box – probably top right of just about every browser these days;
How do you use it – do you just set your default search engine to Google and forget about it? What about when you want to search Wikipedia, do you just search for Wikipedia, click on the top result and perform your Wikipedia search from there? What if you’re looking for something on Amazon? If you’re like me and you’ve ever changed it to perform a search – you’ve probably forgotten to change it back to your usual default search engine afterwards!
Here’s a handy hint for Firefox 3 users (of course, which you all are). If you click the search engine selector and choose ‘Manage Search Engines’ you see a box like this;
on which you can set keywords for each of your installed search engines.
So to search for ‘ColdFusion’ on Amazon.co.uk I can type into my address bar (aka Smart Location Bar, or unofficially the ‘Awesome bar’);
“amazon ColdFusion”
and my search is performed directly against Amazon without having to worry about switching search engines (or more importantly search Amazon and then switch it back to my default afterwards!)
EDIT: I’m not disputing the fact that people use the search box, my question was to whether people actually use it to switch engines – or as most do just treat it as a ‘search google’ box.
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An alternative is to use the keyboard shortcuts…
Ctrl/Cmd-K will take your focus to the search box. Ctrl/Cmd-Up/Down Arrow will change the selected search engine. Alt/Opt-Enter will open the resultant search in a new tab.
I think that’s a little bit long winded – it’s a hell of a lot more keystrokes and then you have to remember to change it back
which is the bit i ALWAYS forget.
This is also a neat tip for Chrome. You can manage the keywords just like firefox. Chrome defaults to using the site address as the keyword, so by default you can do “amazon.com coldfusion”. However, you could change the keyword to amazon and use “amazon coldfusion”.
Chrome also picks up new sites as you use them to search. For example, facebook.com, whois.net, ismywebsiteok.com, wowhead.com, docs.jquery.com, etc. all got added to my search engines after I used them.
This feature was present in Firefox 2 as well. The search box is for noobs.
I prefer right-clicking on a search field and selecting “add a keyword for this search”.
I use it all day long. With CTRL+K I can quickly focus it. For often, I do:
CTRL+T (new tab)
CTRL+K (focus search)
Yeah, I just have mine defaulted to Google. I basically search via google no matter what.
CFQuickDocs has a search plugin for FireFox! I use it all the time!
http://cfquickdocs.com/
John and Company,
I love the FF browser search bar but wanted more. So my partner and I developed GoogAzon FF plug in that essentially displays Amazon and Ebay search results when you use either Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Live search engines to make it easier to shop for music, books, electronics and other gadgets. You can download the plug in from http://spandexfox.com/ or the FF add on site at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9448.
What do you all think of it?
Respectfully,
Freddy
you are right, not many people know you can manage the engines
i use google.com for google searches, and the browser search bar is set to wikipedia
really pointless as my home button is set to google – i removed it