Type less to access websites faster

Posted by Martin in Browsing, firefox  Tags: , , , ,

27

Mar


I’m using the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox to access websites with the click - or two - of the mouse button. Space is limited there however and I’m using another way to access websites pretty fast without having to enter the full url in the address bar. The feature that I’m using is called keyword in Firefox and nickname in Opera; Don’t think Internet Explorer is offering that feature yet.

This obviously only works if you have added the website to the bookmarks in either Firefox or Opera. When doing so you can add a keyword or nickname for that url which in turn makes it possible to access the website by typing in that keyword in the address bar.

Instead of accessing the website http://www.windows7news.com/ I simply type w7 and hit enter. The website loads just fine. Now, I do not recommend to add keywords for every bookmark that you have. This would surely lead to problems remembering the keywords for those urls unless you have a photographic memory.

I have about ten keywords for domains that I access regularly to speed up access. I do not add keywords for very short urls like cnn.com for instance but everything with 5+ chars makes sense. (it’s enough to enter cnn for cnn to enter the website in Firefox because Firefox will automatically load the first website in the Google results if no matching keyword was found.


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chris leigh says, March 28th, 2008   

almost completely unrelated, but google offers a browser synchronisation tool that you can install in firefox… i came across it this evening for first time! probably really old news to some people but this saved me a lot of hassle plus i dont have to ‘type a lot’ in google to find websites in my bookmarks on my home pc now (now synchronised with work pc it updates both!).

check here http://tools.google.com/firefox/browsersync/install.html

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USBman says, March 28th, 2008   

This is a helpful hint, indeed. I used to do this very same thing. I found another option that was more useful for me, however.

I strongly recommend OpenDNS - aside from all its other benefits (content filtering, phishing protection, etc), it also does the very same thing as described in this post, and from any computer utilizing utilizing this service.

Check it out: http://opendns.com

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Roman ShaRP says, March 28th, 2008   

How about search via address string?
I used to it in Opera, but can’t find in FireFox.

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Martin says, March 28th, 2008   

Roman what d you mean by address string, typing in only part of the address ?

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Roman ShaRP says, March 28th, 2008   

I mean shortcuts to searches. In Opera I can create shortcut for Wikipedia search, type in address string “w FireFox”, and jump to Wikipedia article about Firefox.

Can I somehow do this in Firefox?

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Martin says, March 28th, 2008   

Roman yes you can do that. Five default keyword searches are available, they are “google”, “wp”, “dict”, “quote” and “slang”.

To add your own you need to bookmark the page with a search and replace the search string with the %s parameter. You can then use “keyword searchterm” to do the same in Firefox.

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Rarst says, March 28th, 2008   

I don’t know about Firefox but Opera has even less known feature related to subject - you can set nicknames not only for separate bookmarks but for folders with bookmarks as well.

This way it’s easy to have nickname (or even interface button, it only doesn’t work with quick start - http:// is added which is ruining nickname) that opens set of sites at once.

PS custom search engines is totally awesome feature! :)

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katie says, March 28th, 2008   

I like firefox but sorta i dont like Opera

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Roman ShaRP says, March 28th, 2008   

Great, it works! Thanks, Martin!

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Thinker says, March 29th, 2008   

WOW! Awesome, I didn’t know about such simple way to make bookmarks work easier :)

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