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Location bar tricks

Revision as of 12:32, 1 November 2009

This article outlines some methods for improving the functionality of the location bar in the browser.

Default search engine

Just like with Firefox you can use the browser location bar to search Google. By default, if you enter more than one word in the location bar you will be taken to the Google's first search result (i.e. 'I Feel Lucky'). To see the normal search results instead do the following:

1. Type about:config in the location bar.
2. Type in 'Name' field (case sensitive): keyword.URL
3. Type or paste in the 'Value' field: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
4. Tap 'Set preference'
5. Restart the browser

Alternatively, use this link (one line):

about:config?prefname=keyword.URL&prefvalue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sourceid%3Dnavclient%26gfns%3D1%26q%3D

This will make the change in about:config.

You can replace Google with your preferred search engine.

Yubnub shortcuts

If instead you change the default search engine from Google's I'm Feeling Lucky to Yubnub, you can search almost any web site directly from the address line. So, you can for example do the following searches:

• g <search>: Searches Google for <search>.
• am <search>: Searches Amazon for <search>.
• wi <search>: Searches Wikipedia for <search>.
• imdb <search>: Searches IMDb for <search>.

See the list of the common shortcuts for more.

This functionality is similar to that of Opera and Firefox, but with Yubnub, you don't need to tweak it. The shortcuts are already there. (Though this has the disadvantage that you can't tweak them to your preferences. For example, I usually use w for Wikipedia; but it is reserved for weather.com on Yubnub.)

To enable:

1. Type about:config in the location bar.
2. Type in 'Name' field (case sensitive): keyword.URL
3. Type or paste in the 'Value' field: http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=
4. Tap 'Set preference'
5. Restart the browser2. Enter "keyword.URL" into the Name box at the top (above Set Preference).

Alternatively, use this link (one line):

about:config?prefname=keyword.URL&prefvalue=http%3A%2F%2Fyubnub.org/parser/parse%3fcommand%3d

Also, if you use Speed Dial, your browsing experience will be much better. (Remember to use iamthewalrus' and Benson's version, not mine. That one is much improved.)

OpenDNS shortcuts

An alternative is to use OpenDNS shortcuts. OpenDNS is free, but you have to register and make your IP address or network recognized. (This is done only once if you have a static IP or use the dynamic IP software of OpenDNS.)

Steps:

1. Register your network on OpenDNS.
2. Define shortcuts. Shortcuts fall into two categories:
   • Site shortcuts: For example, typing m can you to mail.google.com
   • Search shortcuts: For example, typing "g asd fgh" will search for asd fgh on Google, or "w asd fgh" for Wikipedia search etc. To create such a shortcut, make a search for asd and replace the part "asd" in the resulting search result page's URL to %s. So for Google, searching for asd will be: "http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=asd&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8" and as a shortcut URL one needs to give "http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8".
3. Make microb work with the shortcuts. Follow the instructions on this page: http://www.opendns.com/support/article/123 .