o.o it's intuitive imo. !g - google, !yf - yahoo finance, !cb - crunchbase, !new...

Nadya · on June 17, 2015

Sometimes it's about wanting a trivially shorter keyword.

!h searches Hoogle; I would prefer it to search Hacker News. To search Hacker News I have to use !hnsearch or !hn

!hn isn't much larger than !h but is still something I would prefer to set myself.

!m goes to Google Maps but I would prefer to use another map service. I could use !mapquest but would rather it just be !m

!sd goes to Slickdeals instead of Science Daily (which is !sciencedaily , talk about lengthy)

E:

I just compared my keywords and then searched the DDG Bang list for where I would be taken if I had used DDG instead of ones I set myself.

E:

>Plus I make ddg my default browser so I do just go to the address bar put `!yt cats` and get youtube cat videos.

I just type "y cats" and get youtube cat videos. ;)

ahrs · on June 17, 2015

>!h searches Hoogle; I would prefer it to search Hacker News. To search Hacker News I have to use !hnsearch or !hn

>!hn isn't much larger than !h but is still something I would prefer to set myself.

>!m goes to Google Maps but I would prefer to use another map service. I could use !mapquest but would rather it just be !m

>!sd goes to Slickdeals instead of Science Daily (which is !sciencedaily , talk about lengthy)

It sounds like this is a prime use case for text shortcuts such as those built into OS X or Textexpander etc…

Just create a shortcut to transform '!h' to '!hn' or '!sd' to '!sciencedaily'.

Nadya · on June 17, 2015

Or it's a prime reason to use keywords, a functionality built into modern browsers, such that I only need to type "sd" to search Science Daily.

http://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html

bhauer · on June 17, 2015

Thank you for singing the praises of bookmark keywords, which are apparently a long-lost and forgotten feature to many people. I love all of mine, and it sounds like you've created a great library of your own. Good thing neither of us have to agree on what keywords to use.

Nadya · on June 17, 2015

I blow some people's minds when I tell them about tab groups (ctrl+shift+e) in Firefox.

>Good thing neither of us have to agree on what keywords to use.

Precisely! :)

bhauer · on June 18, 2015

> I blow some people's minds when I tell them about tab groups (ctrl+shift+e) in Firefox.

What do they think that icon to the right of the tabs is? Just some bit of abstract art? :)

Nadya · on June 18, 2015

I have a heavily customized userChrome.css - none of Firefox's Chrome UI is exposed to me. The only UI I see are the few context menu options I left and tab groups (if you can consider that FF UI)

It's a lot like Pressing F11 without the issues that arise when using Full Screen browsing.