Using browser search keywords
Published March 17th, 2009 by Lachlan CooperOne thing I spend a lot of my working (and playing) time with each day is my trusty web browser. Naturally I want to get things done as efficiently as possible, so it makes sense to reduce the time I need to spend on the most common tasks. One of these is searching.
Traditionally, a search engine was used by typing in the site’s address or clicking a bookmark, waiting for the page to load, clicking to select the search field, typing the query, and hitting Enter. That’s two separate page loads, and a whole lot of unnecessary mouse movement and clicking or typing.
More recently, browsers have started providing a built-in search box, into which you can enter a query and get results with only one page load. That’s a big improvement, but the box takes up a fair amount of useful screen space. If you use more than one search engine, constantly clicking to select between them also makes the process a lot slower than it could be.
Fear not: there is a solution which reduces the time taken for the entire search process to just a second or two! Mozilla Firefox calls this feature smart keywords.
Read the rest of this entry »