Find it quickly with keywords

One of the little known features of Firefox is the keyword. You use it in the search bar to quickly go to a site and enter a search term. Rather than entering a URL and enter key, then putting a search term in and pushing enter again, you do this all in one step once you define your keyword. For example, if I want to look up the definition of the word noxious in dictionary.com, I would just type in Firefox's search box d noxious. If I wanted to find an article for the same word in wikipedia, I would type wp noxious. And if I wanted to find books related to noxious in Amazon and WorldCat, I would use am noxious and wc noxious.

There are two ways to define keywords. The first is to use the search box in the upper right corner of Firefox. Click the menu and "Manage Search Engines," then "Edit Keyword ..." In the pop-box, just put in the term that you will use to query with. I like to keep my keywords very short, to make it faster to type them in.

If the search tool isn't listed there, the other way is to go to the site and add your keyword directly. This works in most cases, although screens with lots of boxes and search options can be confusing for Firefox. After you navigate to the site, right click on whatever the search box is on the screen and select "Add a keyword for this search ..." A dialog box will come up. For Name, copy and paste the URL for the screen you are on. For keyword, put in your abbreviation. For example, I have a keyword for WorldCat. In Name, I have http://www.worldcat.org/ and in Keyword I have wc. You can just leave Bookmarks Menu for Create In drop-down.

You can refine your keywords for better searches. For example, my keyword for amazon.com is just am. But I also use amb to limit the search to just books in Amazon. I did this by first navigating to the screen for just the book search (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=) and then right clicked the Amazon search box and defined the keyword amb (for Amazon Books).

You can also use the keyword to just get to the site quickly. Enter your keyword only, with no search term, in Firefox's search box.

You can read more about keywords by reading what Mozilla has to say about Smart Keywords and the section on keywords in the Search Bar article. Here are some of my frequently used keywords. Are there other keywords you find useful? I'd love to know!

• Amazon : am : http://www.amazon.com/
• Amazon books : amb : http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=
• Dictonary : d : http://dictionary.reference.com/
  
• WorldCat : wc : http://www.worldcat.org/
  
• Wikipdia : wp : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search