It may be a month until I write again.  I haven’t abandoned the blog, but I’ll be travelling and will hopefully only interact with computers to a1) get money or b2) get tickets or c3) utilize a medieval weapon in a property-destroying rampage.

So, in the spirit of feeling stressed out and not having enough time to do anything properly, I’ll post another techie time-saver:  Firefox Quick Searches.

The What-What:

The Old Way:

  1. Click bookmark for wikipedia
  2. Wait for wikipedia page to load
  3. Find the search box 
  4. Type in the search term you’re looking for (”Cat Stevens”)
  5. Wait for the Cat Stevens page to load

The Quick Search Way:

  1. In the Firefox URL, type: wiki “Cat Stevens”
  2. Wait for the Cat Stevens page to load

Oooh-la-la!  The time-saving, sooth-that-web-irritation jamboree has begun! For whom do the disco-cowbells toll??  They toll for thee, ripping some smartee webtronica kung-fu in the web browser!!

The How-How:

  • In the Firefox File Menu, click Bookmarks, click Manage Bookmarks
  • Click the New Bookmark icon in the upper left corner

The two secrets to making a quick search are the Location and the Keyword.  Let’s make an imaginary Quick Search for Rotten Tomatoes, the awesome movie review site which amalgamates reviews from newspapers and web sites all over the country and gives a Fresh / Rotten rating.

  • In the Name: field, type:

Rotten Tomatoes

The next part is somewhat tricky.  You’ll have to go to the site in question and complete a search.  So, I went to Rotten Tomatoes, and typed in their search field: “Pancho Villa”.

  • On the resulting page, Ctrl-C to copy the URL in the Address bar:
    screenshot of Rotten Tomatoes and Firefox address bar

 

  • Switch back to Firefox.  The “Add Bookmark” dialogue box should still be open.
  • In the Location: field, Ctrl-V to paste the URL.
  • Delete your search term, and replace it with:

%s

screenshot of Add Bookmark box

  • In the Keyword: field, type in a brief keyword.  This will be what you type into the address bar to access this Quick Search, so make it memorable and short.  For Rotten Tomatoes, I’ll type in a keyword of:

rotten

  • Click OK.

Yee-haw!  Now, to find out just how bad “Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift” really is, you can type:

rotten “Tokyo Drift”

in the Firefox Address Bar and watch your time-wasting efficiency go through the roof!

Have a good July everyone, and may only small, delicate, middle-class children lose limbs with unsafe fireworks this year.