Firefox Search Engines

Several years ago, I resisted switching away from Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) because things weren’t faster on Mozilla.  It was a Netscape Navigator clone, and it did nothing for me.  It wasn’t until Firefox 1.5 or so came out that things got much faster and FF really made its inroads into the general public.  Firefox still wasn’t faster than IE for me, but there was one thing that made it huge: the search engines.

I’m a person that likes to use one thing at a time.  Either I use the keyboard, or I use the mouse.  If I’m on the keyboard, I use Launchy to launch my programs, then I use shortcuts to navigate everything.  If I’m on my mouse, I use mouse gestures to do everything I want to faster.  It’s my opinion that gestures are generally underused.

So the reason I stuck with Firefox over the faster IE was search engines.  That little box in the upper right corner -  if you’re normal, it is stuck on Google but has the capability to take you to such useless websites as Amazon and Creative Commons.

It is so much more powerful than that.  So much more customizable.  The Firefox website offers access to a number of popular but useless search engines on its main website.  You have to find the somewhat hidden link to the thousands of community-created search engines to get any real value out of the search box(http://mycroft.mozdev.org/).  Do yourself a favor and get rid of amazon, creative commons, and yahoo if it’s on there by default.  In fact, do yourself a favor and get rid of anything yahoo (except fantasy sports stuff).

I use (and this is tailored to me): google (duh); allmusic.com (artist); dictionary.com; ebay; ratebeer.com (see my account by going to www.ratebeer.com and searching “sersdf”); mininova; piratebay; urbandictionary; rottentomatoes; and wikipedia.

Now, of course, nobody else should have those same sites.  But if you tailor it properly, your internet experience will be so much faster.  Say I’m at the desktop and I want to look up a band.  I hit *alt-space*, then *f, enter*, then *ctrl-k*, then *ctrl-down-down*, type *bandname* and hit enter.  The commands prompted by those stars are, respectively, open launchy, open firefox, go to search engines, change search engine to allmusic.com, look up bandname.  If I want to google something, it takes four keystrokes: alt-space, ctrl-k.

Any self-respecting technogeek already knows this, but if it’s new to you, give it a try.  You’ll be glad you did.