While you could use the Ctrl-f combination for that, it is not the most comfortable thing to do. SearchWP adds another interesting option. The Firefox add-on adds word highlighting capabilities to the Firefox search bar.

It works automatically once it has been installed in the browser. All search terms that you enter into the search bar are automatically converted to buttons. These buttons act as word highlighters for that particular page.

A click on one of the buttons highlights the next instance of that word on the page. This interestingly enough works on other open web pages in the browser as well. Just enter a word or words into the search form without searching. The add-on converts the words automatically into buttons which can then be used on all pages to highlight the text there.

Firefox users who have the add-on installed in their version of the browser can cycle through all instances of the word on the active page easily this way. They can also search backwards on the page by holding down the Shift key while clicking. Phrases can be added by using quotation marks around the phrase.

Many users have used the extension as a replacement for a similar feature of Google’s Toolbar which has been discontinued a while ago.

The extension ships with three options. It is first possible to enable or disable word highlighting with or without case matching. The other two options let users select the minimum number of characters a search word needs to have to be converted into a button, and the option to group all word tokens into a single menu at the end of the search form.

SearchWP is a handy add-on for Firefox users who want their search terms highlighted in the search results. The add-on can be downloaded from the official Firefox add-on repository over at the Mozilla website.

One of those experimental spin-offs is the AwesomeBar HD which is now available as a beta release for Firefox 4 and newer versions of the web browser. As the name suggests, it has something to do with Firefox’s address bar.

AwesomeBar HD has been designed to improve Firefox’s existing address bar functionality. It combines two different aspects. First, it offers options to select items from the local browsing history quickly and efficiently. I’m not entirely sure how that differs from Firefox’s current handling of type-as-you-go results in the address bar. Maybe the results listing has been improved to put the most likely results at the top of the suggestion list.

The second feature introduces categories to the address bar. After you install the extension you will notice a list of category suggestions that are placed in it. This ranges from searching the web over books, references, shopping or sport. One of the negative side effects of this is that the url of the website may not be displayed in full anymore.

That’s a big security issue as it makes you more vulnerable to phishing attacks. There does not seem to be a way to display the url in full at this point in development. You can display the web address in full by clicking on it.

But how do these categories work then? Well the idea is that you enter a search term and pick a category to perform a search on the web for that term. You can alternatively start with a category and enter the search term afterwards.

The categories basically lead to specialized search engines. Most categories list more than one search engine so that you can switch the category’s default search engine. You find three video search engines under video, and the three top search engines under search the web. The search results page is opened in a new tab in the web browser.

For me personally, this looks like nothing more than a pre-defined list of keyword searches turned into clickable categories. So, instead of having to configure search engines and keywords that you want to use, you end up with a large list of clickable search engines instead.

I do not really see a reason to use it. Then again, it is an early release and the developer could improve the add-on significantly, for instance by adding options to add or remove categories and search engines from the listings, or by allowing users to enter the category name, e.g. video, manually in the address bar.

AwesomeBar HD is available at the Firefox add-on repository. It is a restartless add-on that is ready for use without restart of the browser.

That default engine is Google’s standard search which always loads the search results page. In Firefox 3 the browse by name feature was used instead, which opens a web page directly if Google is 100% certain that a web page is the correct answer to that request. The Wikipedia website would for instance be opened if you’d enter wikipedia into the address bar and hit enter.

Here is how you can restore that behavior, or switch to another search engine when you use the Firefox address bar to search the Internet.

Change Firefox Address Bar Search

Enter about:config in the address bar and hit enter. You may need to accept the warning page before you see the configuration options. Enter keyword.url in the filter and locate the parameter keyword.url.

The key has no value by default which means it uses the standard Google search option that always opens the search results page.

Double-click the parameter and copy paste one of the following urls into the form to change the default Firefox address bar search engine.

• Google Browse By Name: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
• Google I’m Feeling Lucky: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&btnI=&q=
• Google Default: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=
• Yahoo Search: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=
• Bing Search: http://www.bing.com/search?q=
• Ask: http://www.ask.com/web?q=

The new search engine is immediately active. It is a good idea to keep the about:config tab open for now, open a new tab with Ctrl-t and do some test searches to check that everything is working as intended.

You may want to use a different search engine, for instance a local Google search engine. The easiest way to get the right web address to paste into the preferences is to perform a search with an easily recognized search phrase. You can search for GHACKSNET for instance. If you perform that search on google.de you get the results page url

http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&source=hp&q=GHACKSNET&btnG=Google-Suche

All you need to do know is to remove everything after the q= in the url and paste that web address in the about:config dialog. This would be

http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&source=hp&q=

if you use this example. And that’s how you change the Firefox address bar search engine.

The extension configures several search engines and options with keywords in the browser during installation. Keywords? Keywords are a native feature of Firefox (and other browsers like Opera) that can be used to add hotkeys to bookmarks. The bookmarks can then be opened in Firefox by entering the keyword in the address bar which saves some typing. Keywords can be combined with search engines to speed up searches, more about that later.

The InstantFox add-on adds the following keywords to the web browser:

• g for Google Search
• i for Google Images
• m for Google Maps
• y for Youtube
• t for Twitter
• w for Wikipedia
• a for Amazon
• e for eBay
• b for Bing
• yh for Yahoo
• wa for Wolframalpha
• f for Weather Forecast
• c for Calulator

You can enter keyword search phrase to search the selected search engine automatically. The phrase b ghacks would search the Bing search engine for Ghacks, i Japan Earthquake would search Google Images for images of the Japanese earthquake.

The results listing is updated as you type, which explains the Instant in the name of the add-on.

Experienced Firefox users may have noticed that the core functionality sans the instant updating is built-in natively in the web browser. Users who do not want to use instant may want to take a closer look at our guide Search And Access Sites Faster With Keywords which explains how to add search engines and keywords to Firefox.

Back to the InstantFox add-on. The add-on is not offering many advantages over manually adding keywords and search engines as of now. The two advantages are that it adds the search engines and keywords automatically, and that the search results are instantly updating whenever a change is made to the search phrase.

The developers of the extension plan to add features to the add-on that could make it more interesting for skeptical users. Beta users of the add-on are already able to use a built-in auto suggest option which suggests keywords based on the user’s input in the address bar.

Another planned addition is the ability to add custom search engines and keywords to the add-on which can then be used like all the others.

You can check out the Mozilla add-on repository if you want to give InstantFox a try. The extension is compatible with all versions of the Firefox web browser from 1.5 to 4.

A word of warning: I have run into a bug after installing the extension that displayed a single web address in the address bar, regardless of the website and tab that was active. (via Caschy)

Scrollbar Search Highlighter improves that mechanism by adding indicators to the Firefox scroll bar, or more precisely to the right of it, that indicate where the searched words or phrases are located on that page.

The extension modifies the space next to the Firefox scrollbar slightly which becomes apparent once a search has been made. The space is widened a bit to make room for markers that indicate matches on the page.

That widened bar stays visible after the first search even if the search form is closed again. Some users may question the necessity of widening the vertical bar in first place. The developer should consider changing this mechanism to avoid this inconsistency.

This extension works with the Finder (Ctrl+F) to help the user see where their search string is present within the web page. The Finder has a “Highlight All” feature that will cause all the matches to be highlighted on the page; if this add-on is used, the matches will additionally be highlighted in a small bar alongside the scrollbar.

Scrollbar Search Highlighter is a handy add-on for Firefox. Especially for users who regularly use the built-in search of the browser to find contents on websites. The Firefox add-on is only available for Firefox 4 and later.

The add-on replaces the search bar with icons of the supported search engines. A click on a search engine icon turns the display into the standard search form which means that the number of clicks to perform a search remains the same.

The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-E (Ctrlcommand K) activates the first search engine in the list which means that it works exactly the same as before.

Only some of the available search engines may be displayed directly. This depends solely on the width of the search box in the Firefox interface. The remaining search engines are shown with a click on the down icon on the right side of the search element.

A middle-click opens the select search engine in a new tab. This behavior can be changed in the program preferences.

A right-click on the search bar opens a context menu with options to manage the installed search engines and to access the add-on’s preferences.

The Manage Search Engines List can be used to add or remove search engines. The available search engines can be sorted easily and the change is shown directly after the window is closed. New search engines can be dragged and dropped on to the search bar as well.

The add-on preferences are extensive and offer several interesting options. It is for instance possible to enable mouse wheel scrolling of search engines, select another default search engine for the search keyboard shortcut and to change backgrounds and dividers. A slight problem is the inability to change the search engine icon which only becomes apparent if two search engines from the same company are displayed (for instance Google Search and Google Encrypted Search).

Quick Search Bar is a handy add-on that helps Firefox users saves clicks when searching with different search engines. The extension is only compatible with Firefox 4.

The Firefox add-on SearchThisSite does not add a third search option to open websites in the browser. It instead optimizes the onsite search option by tapping right into the search engine offered on the site.

How is it done? The add-on tries to identify the onsite search offered by the website, so that the user can use the new search form in the Firefox interface to search the site.

The search results do not get better because of this, but the user saves some time whenever searching for something on websites. Instead of having to locate the search form manually, all that is needed is to enter the search phrase in the form in the Firefox interface to fire off the search.

The Firefox add-on is officially only compatible with Firefox 1.5 to 3.7. It does however work fine under Firefox 4 if compatibility is forced on the add-on.

The functionality cannot be used directly. The first step is to move the add-on interface element to one of the toolbars, the status bar or add-on bar. This is done by clicking on View > Toolbars > Customize which opens a Customize Toolbar window. Locate the Search this site element and drag and drop it to one of the toolbars of the browser.

In this example, the search this site form has been moved to the add-on bar of the browser from where it is easily accessible.

Search this Site is available at the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

Search This site is compatible with a lot of different websites. It works for instance on WordPress blogs and many other sites. NoScript users may need to allow some scripts on the site’s they want to search if the searches are powered by scripts.

The Firefox add-on Find All adds functionality to the on-page search in the web browser.

A search is still initiated the same way, the functionality added by Find All becomes apparent after pressing Enter in the search form.

This increases the size of the Find bar, basically adding a new pane beneath it. This new pane displays all instances of the search phrase on the page in their context.

Each search result is displayed in its own line, with the possibility to jump between instances by clicking with the left-mouse button on a line or using the cursor keys to do so.

find all firefox

The add-on offers two benefits over the standard find on page search in the Firefox web browser.

The first is the listing of all instances of that search phrase in their context. This alone can be very helpful to find relevant information faster.

The second is the ability to navigate between those instances easily either with the mouse or the computer keyboard.

Find All is compatible with all Firefox 3.6.x releases. A download is provided at the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. (via Download Squad)

Some Internet users might prefer to have a different search engine as the default in Firefox. This can be done easily in the configuration of Firefox.

To do that type about:config in the Firefox address bar. First time users need to verify that they are carefully from this point on, everyone else will see the configuration parameters right away.

Enter keyword.url in the filter field, this should return one result:

firefox default search

The value of the parameter should display a Google Search url as the default value. This can easily be changed to another search provider by double-clicking the line and entering a new url that points to a search provider in the form that opens up.

address bar search

Here is a selection of alternative search engines that can be added as the default search engine:

• Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?q=
• Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=ISO-8859-1&p=
• Twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=

Other search engines can be added as easily. All it usually takes is to perform a search on the search engine of your choice and copy the url without the search phrase into the value field in Firefox.

On a side note: I decided to switch to Bing. Why? Well it mainly has something to do with the current update of Google’s search engine ranking algorithm which does not rank my sites on top if I perform a title search but scraper sites (sites that copy contents from my site). Something has gone terribly wrong here.

Before Firefox users who had installed the add-on needed to specify the root url of the website they wanted to search with the core search keyword > in front of the command in the address bar. The term >ghacks.net windows would for instance initiate a Google search for the term Windows on the site ghacks.net

The change now is that the the root domain name is no longer needed in the search phrase if the user is already on the right website. The search parameter would therefor be >windows to search for the term windows on Ghacks.net if the site is the active website.

It is still possible to use the generic search parameter to search other websites, for instance to search Lifehacker or Download Squad while on our website. All the other features of the CyberSearch add-on are still there. Users who never heard about the add-on before can take a look at the following demonstration video for an overview.

The CyberSearch add-on can be downloaded directly at the Mozilla add-on repository.

The former method is probably more convenient for most users. Some users however do have a problem with the way the search form keeps the search phrase in its form after the search has been performed. This is a privacy issue for some users who prefer that their previous search is not displayed in the Firefox toolbar.

The Firefox add-on Clear Search offers a solution by cleaning the Firefox search form whenever a search was performed in the web browser. This is also helpful for Linux users using Linux’s highlight and paste shortcut according to the developer of the add-on.

Clear Search is an experimental search add-on that is compatible with all versions of Firefox 3. It can be downloaded and installed from the Mozilla website.

The shortcut [CTRL F] allows them to search in the active tab but that’s about it. The following article contains three interesting and hopefully useful Firefox tips that improve the local search in the Firefox web browser. Two of the tips are add-ons for the web browser while the last is a setting that provides smoother access to the local search options.

Tip 1: Getting rid of [CTRL F]

The first tip is a basic tip but nonetheless helpful for users who search on pages regularly. Firefox offers an option to start the search on the page immediately without having to press CTRL F first.

Users who want to change to the faster way of searching on a page can do so by opening the Firefox options, switching to the advanced tab in the options and checking the Search for test when I start typing box. It is from then on possible to perform a search on the same page by simply typing the search term.

Tip 2: Search in all open tabs

The Find in tabs add-on provides another interesting search option. It allows Firefox users to search in all open tabs instead of just the active tab. This can be pretty useful for users who do research and have multiple tabs open on the same subject.

Find In Tabs

Tip 3 Smart Find Add-on

The Smart Find add-on adds another interesting option to the Firefox search option. It can find words related to the search phrase which is extremely helpful if words (either the search phrase or the phrase on the website) has been misspelled.

Smart Find

Do you know other tips or Firefox add-ons that improve the local search in the web browser? Let us know in the comments.

The Drag & DropZones extension for Firefox is different and at the same time very convenient because of the way the searches are initiated. It basically comes down to this. The Firefox screen will be divided up into 12, 36 or 64 squares each containing a so called drop zone which will perform a search or command.

It is up to the user if he wants to work with big drop zones or smaller ones which solely depends on the number of search engines and Firefox commands that he adds to the grid. A search consists of selecting an item on a website, dragging it to the square of the desired search engine or command and dropping it in that square.

The grid is shown when dragging elements around including the favicon and name of the service configured in each grid making identification easy.

Drag & DropZones is providing access to all search engines of the Firefox search bar by default which are all shown in the options and positioned on the grid. New search engines can be added by adding them to the Firefox search bar which would enable them in Drag & DropZones as well. The only way of removing a search engine from the grid is to remove it from the search bar.

Besides adding and configuring search engines it is possible to add commands as well like saving an image, copy the image location or opening the link in a new window. All commands of the right-click context menu are available and can be configured in the grid as well.

The Firefox extension comes with a button that can be placed in a toolbar that can turn the extension on or off.

Some users would probably prefer a different search behavior. The default search behavior can be changed by editing the search engine in the Firefox options. It is for instance possible to change the search to a normal Google or Yahoo search which would have the effect that the search result list would always be displayed after sending text to the browser that is not in url form.

The search engine can be changed in the Firefox configuration which can be loaded by typing about:config in the address bar. Entering keyword.URL in the filter field will display the responsible parameter.

The value of the parameter contains the Google search string that is responsible for the Browse By Name search. Removing the gfns=1 variable from the query (and one of the & chars) would turn that query into a normal Google search that would display the search results all the time.

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&q=

Changing the search provider from Google to another one is possible as well. The Yahoo url would look like this:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s

It is important to change the search word with the %s replacement to make the search work on other search engines.

Firefox assumes that all phrases that make use of a period are web addresses and will try to load them. This can be quite frustrating if a user wanted to look up a file name in a search engine. You can test that yourself by entering svchost.exe in the address bar. Firefox will try to load the website svchost.exe even though the .exe domain extension is not existent.

There is no Firefox setting or add-on that can restrict the extensions to the known domain extensions but there is another way to directly saerch for terms with periods in Firefox using the location bar.

All that is needed is to place a “?” before the search term. While a search for svchost.exe would result in a page not found error in Firefox a search for ?svchost.exe would perform the search in the default search engine and deliver the desired result.

Everyone is constantly searching for information and Firefox users are in the great position to be aided by hundreds of search extensions that make searching easier, comfortable and faster.

To much choice on the other hand puts some pressure back on the user who now has to pick the useful extensions and cast the other that are not helping him aside. That’s where this article comes into play. It lists the Firefox Search Extensions that you need to search the Internet professionally. They help you find the information you are looking for faster and efficiently.

The following list contains useful search plugins that can speed up the information finding process tremendously. No toolbar plugins have been included in the list.

General Search Plugins:

Add to Search Bar – Lots of websites provide search forms which can be used to search the contents of those sites. The Add To Search Bar plugin makes it possible to add those to the list of Firefox search engines so that the search can be conducted from the search function in Firefox.

Advanced URL Builder – Add custom searches to the Firefox right-click menu.

CacheIt! 1.0 – It happens sometimes that a website is not responding. It could be down or moving to another server. CacheIt provides access to cached versions of the page so that the information can be retrieved even if the original website is not responding.

Context Search – Only Google Search is available by default when highlighting a term in Firefox. This plugin adds additional search engine options to the menu so that the user can perform searches on Yahoo, Amazon or eBay.

Cooliris – Formerly Piclens. Provides 3D browsing for Image and Videos searches. Creates stunning effects.

CyberSearch – Supercharges the Firefox 3 Location Bar with search results that appear instantly. Perform searches in the location bar without having to open a search engine.

Dict – Look up Word definitions of highlighted words by right-clicking them and selecting the appropriate action.

Find In Tabs – Perform searches among multiple tabs. This works pretty well in conjuction with the MultiSearch plugin.

HighlightAll – Pressing Control F in Firefox opens a search form that allows the user to search on the active page. Highlight All highlights all occurrences of the search term on the page making it easier to find them.

Interclue – Find out what’s behind a search result before clicking the link.

MultiSearch – Ever wanted to search for multiple search terms at once? MultiSearch steps in and makes that possible. Just enter search terms and a comma delimiter to open search results for each of the terms in individual tabs. The terms Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird would open three tabs each displaying search results for one of the terms.

Search Keys 0.8.1 – Search Keys adds keyboard navigation to search results pages of Google, Yahoo and Delicious. Instead of clicking on a search term the user can press the assigned number on his keyboard to open the website. This makes it possible to perform a search and open results without using the mouse at all.

Searchbar Autosizer – Automatically resizes and clears the searchbar. Can also revert back to the default search engine. Useful add-on for minimalistic Firefox themes.

Surf Canyon – Search Engine Assistant – A search assistant that automatically recommends and ranks search results based on the users choice. It can pull data from search results pages that are currently not shown to the user.

Who Is This Person? – Highlight a name on a webpage and search for information about that person on sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Google News.

Site Specific Search Plugins:

Bug.gd Error Search – Bug.gd is a user driven website that contains a huge database of errors and solutions. This search plugin adds the error search to Firefox.

Coogle – Highlights the search phrase on websites that have been discovered by searching on Google.com.

Customize Google – Removes unwanted information like ads from Google search results and adds additional useful information like search options on other search engines to it.

Delicious Bookmarks – Keeps the Bookmarks of Delicious and Firefox in sync.

GooglePreview – Adds thumbnail previews of the websites in the search results.

Locator – Locates highlighted addresses on Google Maps.

Webmaster Specific Search Plugins:

SearchStatus – Displays a wealth of information about the current website in the statusbar. This includes the Google Pagerank and Alexarank. Provides Link Reports, whois search, keyword density and nofollow link options among others.

SEOQuake – A useful extensions for webmasters who want to optimize their pages for various search engines.

The extension is only available for Firefox 3 and the best Firefox 2 users can get at the moment is the extension Peers. Peers (which I discovered at Cybernet News) adds the same principle to the right search form. It displays the first seven Google or Yahoo search results beneath the entered search term in real time.

A left-click loads the search result in the active tab while a middle-click opens it in a new one. The right-click menu is not accessible in that form.

The number of search results that are displayed can be changed from 0-10 which is the same range for search engines that are displayed beneath the results and the amount of search suggestions. The maximum is therefor 30 items divided equally among suggestions, search results, and search engines.

The compact display has one disadvantage. If the websites displayed have long titles the url will not be fully displayed. I always check the url before I click it which makes Peers for my purposes not that practical. The author should probably consider using two lines to display the contents or use additional horizontal space if that is possible.

Peers is not compatible to Firefox 3 by default. If you follow the tip posted in my Awesome Search article you can make it compatible though.

The new Awesome Bar looks into the history and bookmarks by default when the user begins to type in the first letter of an url. It even remembers previous selections and sorts them accordingly. One thing that is missing though is direct web search from that bar, and that is what Awesome Search provides.

You can enter any term in that bar and the add-on will perform a Google search for that term adding to the results found. Google results will have the Google icon while results from the history or bookmarks will feature a star.

Apparently an Amazon search was also added which I do not find that useful but since it’s version 0.0.1 of the add-on it’s understandable that not all features have been implemented yet.

Dark Kosmos has created a screencast of the bar in action which can be accessed by following this link. I had some troubles getting this add-on to work in Firefox 3 RC1 portable. It did work after disabling the compatibility check. To do that type about:config in the address bar, right-click and select New -> Boolean. Enter extensions.checkCompatibility and select the value false.