Shortcuts for the address bar in Firefox

With firefox we actually have 2 possibilities to search something on the web. The first one is the old way to search, you go to a search engine (like Baidu, Google,..) and you type what you want. at least 3 clicks Really too slow! The second solution is to use the search bar on the right-top, need to select the engine with the mouse then type what you want; a little better, but still need 2 clicks.

The actual best solution is to add a shortcuts for your favorite website in the address bar. Then you’ll just need to type in the address bar something like “g IBM“, to search on Google the word IBM.. or write “qqz 11223344” to directly go to the QQZone 11223344. Easy no ?

QQZone shortcut

Let’s take the example for Baidu; We need to go baidu, make a random search and add this page to our bookmarks (like: http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=IBM), then go to Organize bookmarks and select your entry. You have the information about Name, Location and Tags; and if you look a little closer, you’ll see a little arrow..

Organize Bookmarks

Click on it to have more details, then we will use the “keywords”, this is where we should write the shortcut, let use a simple one like “b“. Now we should go to the address and replace the “IBM” by “%s“, this variable will be what you add after the “b “. Then save and you’ll can use your shortcut :)