Firefox Keyword Bookmarks

I’m well aware that most of you that read my blog use Webkit browsers rather than Firefox. Someday, circumstances will let me do that again, but this trick is one of the reasons why I need Firefox right now: keyword bookmarks, specifically keyword bookmarks with search entry.

These are powerful. I use them to search specific sites with Google, write tweets from my address bar, and toggle “Feeling Lucky” searches with Google.

The process of making them isn’t hard, though it’s not exactly what I would call intuitive:

1. Get the URL that performs the action - for example, “http://twitter.com/home?status=URL that posts a tweet”
2. Create a bookmark (doesn’t matter what it goes to yet), then use the Bookmark Manager to edit the bookmark
3. Replace the bookmark’s URL with your URL
4. Replace the query (ex. “URL that posts a tweet”) with %s in the bookmark URL
5. Set a keyword for the bookmark (ex. “/t”)

Then try it out! Type into your address bar:

/t I’m posting tweets from my Firefox address bar!

The result should be the Twitter timeline page with your text in the tweet box, all ready to submit. It’s not perfect, of course, and I’d rather use Tweetie for that sort of thing, but being stuck on Windows, you have to make do!

I have some other URL’s that make for good keyword searches. Create bookmarks from these links to try them out:

• Google Image Search
• Feeling Lucky?
• Tumblr Docs
• Smashing Magazine Site Search

Have fun with custom searches!