Seems that Arvind is talking up some Firefox search plugins. That’s cool. I really love the extensibility of Firefox and how it is so easy to add stuff to it. What I really don’t get is why you’d want a search plugin. They simply aren’t necessary.
I mean if you like having a little drop-down that goes specifically to your engine of choice (and having to click that drop-down list as well), that’s great. But I’m definitely much more a fan of the keyboard. Using Firefox Keyword Searches, you can do this without an extension, without a restart and more importantly, without a mouse.
Once you’ve added a keyword search, just CTRL-L to select the address bar (heck, click it if you are so fired up to use your mouse), then type your keyword into the bar, followed by the search string. That’s it!
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One response to “Searching with Firefox”
The biggest advantage of the search plugins to me has not been using the drop down box but with the query to extension. If my hand is already on the mouse then all I have to do is highlight the text I want to search for and then tell it which engine to use