Using Firebird as a PowerTool
Today I became aware of the nice keywords feature in Mozilla Firebird. The browser to end all browsers. Or just IE for now.
If you type ‘google horse’ in the address-field it will do a google search for ‘horse’.
If you type ‘dict horse’ it will look up ‘horse’ on dictionary.com.
Nice.
But the fun has just begun!
You can define your own keywords and pipe requests to tool-sites of your choice.
How to do it:
1. find an online service, that encodes your request in the url, like google “http://www.google.com/search?q=horse”
2. make a bookmark in firebird
3. manage bookmarks -> bookmark properties
4. add your preferred keyword
5. edit the location property by adding a %s for the argument you would like to pass on to the page.
6. Example: http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
7. Test it.
If you’re in doubt, you can check the predefined keywords in the ‘quick searches’ folder in the ‘manage bookmarks…’
Or you can take my examples below, right-click bookmark them and supply your own keywords.
I have made these so far:
de [danish word] — translates the word from danish to english on ordbogen.com
ed [english word] — the other way around
dsn [danish word] — danish dictionary from dsn.dk
Any website that uses url-encoded arguments for form-submissions can be a part of your toolbox.
Statement: this is in fact productivity boosting.
Counter-statement: blogging is not.