by Gina Trapani
If you're a Firefox user who eschews the mouse, then keyword Quick searches are for you. Give it a try: in Firefox, key up to the location bar (Windows: Alt-D, Mac: Cmd-L), type dict eschew and hit Enter. You'll be automagically transported to the Dictionary.com definition of "eschew" (to avoid, shun). That's a Quick search in action.
Firefox comes with the dict search pre-installed, along with the predictable google keyword search. But you can set up any number of Quick searches with keywords that map to useful search engines. Today's feature offers 15 useful Quick Searches which you can execute in Firefox without ever taking your fingers from the keyboard.
Note: the Firefox search box can also contain any number of engines. However, it's not as easy to get to this box and switch engines using only the keyboard as it is using Quick searches.
To set up a Quick search, go to any search engine page with an input box using Firefox, like say, the Flickr photo search page. To set up a Quick search for Flickr tags, right-click inside the tag search input box and choose "Add a Keyword for this Search..." like so:
Then, enter a title for the search and a keyword you'll use to execute it, like this:
Once you press the "Add" button, your Quick search is set up. Now, from the Firefox address bar, type flickrtag puppy to search Flickr tags for - you guessed it - puppies.
Now, you shouldn't have to go through all the work of setting up Quick searches manually. I've gone ahead and made my Quick search bookmarks available for download, which includes 15 keywords I use on a daily basis.
Here's how to get it installed:
Right-click on this Lifehacker's Quick search bookmarks file and choose "Save Link As..." Place the file somewhere on your computer.
In Firefox, from the Bookmarks menu, choose "Manage Bookmarks."
From the Bookmarks Manager File menu, choose Import. Choose "Import Bookmarks from File." Browse to and open the file you just saved.
Now you've got a "Lifehacker Quick Searches" folder in your Bookmarks, which includes all sorts of keyword searches. For instance, lh photoshop searches Lifehacker for Photoshop references; wikiped Richard Stallman transports you to the Stallman page on Wikipedia; thes easy looks up words with similar meanings to "easy" in a thesaurus.
See a full list of all the Quick searches included in this file:
Lifehacker Quick Searches
Acronym Finder Quick Search
Type "acronym " to look up what an acronym stands for in Acronym Finder. For example, "acronym WTF."Amazon Quick Search
Type "amazon" to look up an item on Amazon. Dictionary.com Quicksearch
Type "dict" in the addressbar to perform a dictionary look-up. Ebay Quick Search
Type "ebay- " to find something up for auction at Ebay.
Flickr Quick Search
Type "flickr" to search all the tags, titles and descriptions of images at photo-sharing site Flickr. Froogle Quick Search
Type "froogle" to look up a product on shopping search engine Froogle. Google Maps Quick Search
" to get a Google map of a street address or location.
Type "mapGoogle Image Quick Search
Type "image" to find images that match using Google Image Search. Lifehacker Google Search
Type "lh" to search Lifehacker for information. Technorati Quick Search
Type "technorati" to see what weblogs are posting about a topic. Thesaurus Quick Search
Type "thes" to find words with similar meanings in a thesaurus. Urban Dictionary Quick Search
Type "slang" to look up a slang expression in Urban Dictionary. Wikipedia Quick Search
Type "wikiped" to look it up in collaboratively-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia. Yahoo! Creative Commons Quick Search
Type "cc" to find Creative Commons-licensed items available for reuse with Yahoo!'s CC search. Yahoo! Local Quick Search
Type "local" to find a business listing with Yahoo! Local.
**NOTE: this bookmark must be edited to work in your area. Replace 92037 in the URL with your zip code.
Customize your Quick searches using the Bookmarks manager (Bookmarks menu, Manage bookmarks.) Browse to the "Lifehacker Quick Searches" subfolder and choose Properties of any bookmark. Here you can change a keyword shortcut (say you want a Wikipedia search to map to "wiki" instead of "wikiped") or edit a URL. (The Yahoo! Local Search URL should be edited to include your zip code.)
Got any other search engines that would make a good Quick search? Let me know in the comments, or at tips at lifehacker.com.
Happy searching!
Gina Trapani is the editor of Lifehacker. Her special feature Geek to Live appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker.
