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September 14, 2004

Firefox Tips

Here are some tips/tricks...

Smart Keywords

Say you search on a lot of different things - corporate phonebook, imdb, etc... wouldn't it be handy to have convenient aliases to all these searches? You bet it would be.
  1. Go to the page that has the search box on it, right click on it and choose "Add a Keyword for this Search..."
  2. In the "Add Bookmark" dialog that appears enter a name and a short "keyword" and save the Bookmark...

Now you can type "kw search string" in the URL, e.g. "pb Janet Robinson" for a quick phonebook lookup. I can't live without my keywords. Oh, and it handles POST forms too, unlike most other browsers!

Links Pushed To Your Toolbar

Feedster syndicates its search results pages in RSS. If you're interested in a particular topic (be it Politics, Science, Cars, or Firefox like me)...
  1. Go to Feedster, and run a search on the topic you're interested in.
  2. On the Search Results page click the orange "RSS" icon in the bottom left of the Firefox window
  3. Add the Live Bookmark to your Bookmarks Toolbar.

Now you'll be fed new articles about that topic - fresh articles every day!

Rearrange Your Toolbars

Get more room for web page content -
  1. Go to View->Toolbars->Customize Toolbars...
  2. Click in the blank space between the "Help" menu item and the throbber on the right side of the menu bar and drag the empty space into the toolbar palette. The throbber will move over left by the Help Menu Item
  3. Now drag the Bookmarks Toolbar items up off the Bookmarks Toolbar in between the Help Menu item and the Throbber.
  4. Click "Done" on the Customize Toolbar window
  5. Now go to View->Toolbars->Bookmarks Toolbar to turn off the empty Bookmarks Toolbar.

You're left with something that looks like this. More space for web pages!

Posted by ben at September 14, 2004 10:41 PM

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