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Outfox, Outsearch With Firefox

Posted by timothy on from the feel-unlucky dept.

Scrivs writes "This article goes into detail showing users how to effectively utilize the hidden search powers of Firefox. Instead of using the basic search that just sends you to an 'I'm Feeling Lucky' page from Google, you can customize the browser to perform any type of search you want."

13 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. A little disingenuous by PhysicsGenius · · Score: 3, Informative

    All of this is core Mozilla functionality that can be done in the stock browser from Mozilla. Why the divisive attitudes on Firefox vs Mozilla anyway? It's like the vi vs emacs of the browser world.

    1. Re:A little disingenuous by showdax · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is no "Firefox versus Mozilla" attitude. Both use similar code but have different uses. One's a stand-alone browser, the other is a suite of web-related programs.

      The article applies to both, as you said, but is just advertising what is popular.

      --
      --- March, milde, march!
  2. Find As You Type by Thyamine · · Score: 4, Informative

    My favorite feature is being able to type text directly on the webpage and having it search within the webpage for matching text. By default it only searches links, but you can change that by going into Tools -> Options -> Advanced and making sure that Find As You Type is set to not 'search links only'.

    Not using a search engine, I know, but it drives my nuts that when I'm forced to use IE I have to use the CTRL-F Find window.

    --
    I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
    1. Re:Find As You Type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I too cannot live without this. You can also hit '/' (just like vim) before your search string to search all text, and retain the ability to search only links by omitting '/', which is occasionally useful.

    2. Re:Find As You Type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      ' (apostrophe) also searches for links only.

    3. Re:Find As You Type by isorox · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you normally only want to go to links, which is useful when you aren't using a mouse, you can always find text by pressing "/" before searching

  3. Re:keyword.URL by DeadSea · · Score: 2, Informative

    1. go to about:config
    2. filter: keyword.URL
    3. Change the value

    Did you forget the about:config step?

  4. is tweaking unsupported? by TreeHead · · Score: 4, Informative

    ;why no documentation? though i am personally not opposed to searching for or reading tips on modifying the browser, i wonder why "tweaks" like this aren't documented in the help.

    ;are actions such as modifying the chrome or about:config considered "unsupported" by the developers at mozilla? curious...

    ;i would never have found out about how cool firefox keywords are without this article, for instance.

    ;ok, i guess mod me down... i didn't have much to say :)

    ;treehead

    --

    "If any part Linux was stolen, then Windows was the biggest heist in history."

    1. Re:is tweaking unsupported? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      preferential.mozdev.org is a good source for hidden Mozilla and Firefox preferences.

    2. Re:is tweaking unsupported? by Soul-Burn666 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Heh.. I don't like posting links to my own posts (actually I do, lol) but here's a pretty extensive post about features that come or don't come by default in Mozilla and Firefox specifically.

      Mod me down for self-linkage if you want, but I know it helped at least one Firefox newbie go from "this firefox thing is nice" to "woah! this program rocks!"

      --
      ^_^
  5. quicksearch and elinks by BinLadenMyHero · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have been using these features since phoenix0.5 days.
    Quicksearches I use:

    fm http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=%s&section=projects
    man http://linux.ctyme.com/cgi-swish/linuxdoc.cgi?quer y=%s&sort=swishlastmodified&reverse=on
    cpan http://search.cpan.org/search?query=%s&mode=module
    w http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
    e2 http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=%s
    dic http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s

    google:
    g http://www.google.com/search?&q=%s
    l http://www.google.com/linux?q=%s
    img http://images.google.com/images?q=%s
    def http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A%s

    Also, when on a text console, I made a script to perform similar function: google.sh.
    Tip: symlink it to different names to make your life easier.

  6. I've made my own Firefox sidebar (HTML) ... by Jon_Aquino · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... containing bookmarks and *bookmarklets* (Click here) So select some text and click "Google". Or if you're in the Google search results, click the "@" beside Yahoo to change to the Yahoo search results. Or select some text then click "TTS" to get it read out to you. If you're a Blogger user, click "BlogPage" to create a blog entry for the current page. Click "ACF" to create a Usenet post for alt.comp.freeware. etc.

  7. That feature freaked me out by T.Hobbes · · Score: 2, Informative

    The "I'm feeling lucky" feature freaked me out the other day. I'd typed a search string into the address bar, expecting to be taken to a google search results page, but was instead broguht to (what seemed to be) a random webpage. I couldn't find any mention of address bar search functions in the prefs, so I explored some more... and when, after typing "web search" into the bar and being brought to a spyware site, I thought my copy of firefox had been infected somehow. Futher tests revealed the truth, but for a short while I thought the gecko safe-harbour had been invaded.