Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

Like many folks, I rely on the Internet for my primary information gathering on a whole variety of topics. If I want to read a quick general biography of Dolly Parton, I’ll head over to Wikipedia. If I want to see whether to bring an umbrella with me to work in the morning, I’ll pull up Weather.com. And if I want to see what the movie critics are saying about the new movie The Watchmen, I’ll hit up Rotten Tomatoes. These are tasks I do often – if not daily, then almost daily.

Do I Look Like I Have All Day?

The problem with these everyday tasks are how long they take.  I’m a busy person! Using the Wikipedia Dolly Parton search as an example, here’s the steps involved:

1. Click bookmark for Wikipedia
2. Wait for Wikipedia page to load
3. Scan the page to find the search box
4. Type in the search term I’m looking for (”Dolly Parton”)
5. Wait for the Dolly Parton page to load

Boo!  Using the Mozilla Firefox Quick Search feature, I can cut this down into:

1. In the Firefox address bar, type: wiki dolly parton
   
2. Wait for the Dolly Parton page to load

Yay!

Read the rest of this article to learn how to create Firefox Quick Searches.

How To Set Up Firefox Quick Searches

NOTE: I’ve also made a video demonstration to show how to create a Firefox Quick Search (in Flash), if you’d rather watch than read.

Hopefully, you’re now convinced that Firefox Quick Searches can save you hours so you’ll have time for more important things, like reading the latest gossip on Britney Spears.

Let’s see how to set up Firefox Quick Search to get an updated weather report for any zip code.

1. Make sure Mozilla Firefox is open. I’m using Firefox 3.0.x.

Now let’s navigate to the site that we want to create a Quick Search for.

1. In Firefox, in the address bar, type: weather.com

You should be delivered to the Weather.com homepage:

Now, let’s look for the search box.  In my case, I want the 10-Day Forecast page for my local zip code, 47401. At the top of the Weather.com homepage, there’s a search box that will accept zip codes.

1. In the Search box, type: 47401. Don’t click the Search button!

If you had clicked the Search button, you’d be taken to the 10-Day Forecast page for Bloomington, IN:

That’s the page we want to be taken to when we use our Quick Search.

1. On the Weather.com homepage, in the Search box at the top of the page, right-click:
   
   You should see a dialog box.
2. In the dialog box, give the QuickSearch a name and a keyword.
1. The name refers to the label that will be used in Firefox for this Quick Search. Type: Weather.com Quick Search
2. The keyword will be the term you type into the address bar to use this Quick Search, so you’ll want something that’s short and memorable. For weather.com, type: weather
   
3. To finish creating the Quick Search, in the Add Bookmark dialog box, click Add.

That’s it!  Try out your new Firefox Quick Search.

1. In the Firefox address bar, type: weather 53211

You should be taken to the 10 Day Forecast for Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

This approach will work for almost any search box on any web site.

Want to see another example of this? Watch a video demonstration to show how to create a Firefox Quick Start (in Flash).

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.