Randy Laptop

As did many others, I switched from internet Explorer to Firefox as my default web browser of choice some years ago. On the whole the transition was smooth - JAWS presents any HTML document in a standard way and so there was little sufferance in that area. The two things I perhaps missed about IE were the feed view and the favorites menu.

Of feeds, I enjoyed being able to view an entire folder of new items on one page with the feed for all addon, and of favorites, I liked having a standard windows folder because I preferred using it over IE’s Organize Favorites dialog box. Still, these are minor quibbles. I found a decent RSS reader which serves well enough but until recently I hadn’t really done much with Firefox’s bookmarks. Until recently…

I then learned that each bookmark could have a keyword associated with it. That keyword could act as a shortcut, when entered into the location bar. Furthermore, keywords could take a parameter - and this opened up a whole new can of worms.

Stop and think for a moment, just how many websites you might go to and type in some information. Even sites you may visit infrequently, just to look the odd thing up. Then think how much quicker, more productive and streamlined your workflow would be if instead of going to that site’s home page, possibly finding a page within that site, then entering data into a form - instead of that, you go to your location bar, type a keyword, then your search text.

Let us take an example. I did a lot of elemental work in High School Chemistry and the periodic table became quite a friend. I had some old software that let me view element information. Nowadays, there are a plethora of websites to do the same thing. I use one in particular, and now, with a bookmark keyword, if I want to tell you something interesting about helium, all I need do is hit f6 or ctrl+l, and type “element he”. Hitting enter takes me to the precise page on ChemicalElements.com, and I can then expound upon the virtues of this noble gas which was discovered in 1895 by Sir William Ramsay.

This is perhaps not the most useful example for computer users of my generation. Out of our teens, unless we’re pursuing a scientific career or hunting for some obscure fact, there’s little use for this lookup. I’m no scientist, but I do converse with people all over the world…

Time is quite an important concept when talking around the globe, knowing when you should or shouldn’t call someone is always useful information. Suppose I want to make a phone call to a friend in New Zealand but can’t quite remember what time it is there. Dead easy - I go to my bar and type “time Wellington”. It’s almost 11:00 AM on Tuesday morning as I type this, but what do I hear? “11:53pm Tuesday (NZDT) - Time in Wellington, New Zealand”. A little late to call, mayhap - but it’s only 7:00 PM in Hong Kong, so perhaps I’ll turn my international efforts there instead as I seem to have missed the NZ boat.

You can see the advantages of such a system, I’m sure. Take the concept further - to dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopaedias - TO weather lookup, sites that collect quotations, sell things, stream music, provide downloads. Almost anywhere on the web where you fill out a single form field as a method of information retrieval this system will be faster and just as reliable.

The next thing to discuss is how it’s done, of course. To show you exactly how it works I’ll navigate to “element au” (which is the entry for gold on the periodic table). Looking at the URL of this page, we see http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/au.html. As you’ve probably gathered, the “dynamic” part of this address - the bit that changes with each request, if you like - is “au”. if I were to look up helium again, the URL would become http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/he.html. Some pages have your search text in the form of a parameter after the URL - i.e. the location of my time keyword is http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=time+%s. it doesn’t matter how the parameter is specified, as long as it’s a part of the address then you’re in business.

To give a bookmark a keyword, you need to get to its properties within Firefox. I find it easier to create a new one from the bookmark manager than to edit an existing one, so my steps are as follows:

1. With the URL on my clipboard, I hit ctrl+shift+b to get to the bookmark manager.
2. I cursor to my bookmarks menu, then to my submenu which contains my keyword searches. In this way I keep them organised.
3. I go to the organize menu and choose new Bookmark.
4. I input a name that I’ll remember. In the location field I put the URL, and I replace “he” or “au” with “%s”. %s is a Firefox substitution string used with keywords.
5. Finally, in the keyword field I type “element”. Hitting enter saves the bookmark.

It’s worth noting at this stage that you can add any tags, descriptions or whatever else you use to sort your bookmarks. However, because of the %s string in the bookmark’s location, navigating to it from the bookmark menu or tool bar will not work (you’ll end up with a page not found message). I’ve described adding a keyword without using any Firefox extensions or addons or anything of that nature which means that, if you run the browser portably, the keywords will be portable too.

Using a keyword is, as already described, a simple matter of going to your location bar, typing said keyword, giving it any parameters (they are not required by any means) and hitting enter. What I mean by the parameter thing is that if you have a site you visit often without dynamic information (suppose a TV guide), you could just add a “TV” keyword to an existing bookmark and it would work in exactly the same way.

This brings us on to my final point - the combination of keywords and bookmarklets. A Bookmarklet is simply a bookmark that does more than your standard favourite. With use of Javascript a bookmarklet can prompt you for data, take information from the page you’re on, and do something interesting with it. Popular Bookmarklets let you send things with Gmail, post to link sharing sites, and plenty of other fascinating things I’ve probably not yet discovered. The logic behind a bookmarklet is that it’s quick to click - most people stick them in their toolbars for easy access.

I have yet to delve into the depths of the bookmarklet, but as I use twitter quite regularly, thought a method of “tweeting” about the web page I’m on was a good idea. Twitter is a great way to share interesting things, web pages are no exception.

I have two bookmarklets that I use with Twitter. The first, which you can get from Myopic Lunacy, uses a URL shortening service like tr.im to keep the URL you post short. This is often useful but sometimes slow, so for my first ever bookmarklet I created one that lets you tweet your current page’s URL and title. This is what the one I discovered did as well, but I just wanted to see how a bookmarklet might work. To try it out, you can Get it by adding this to your bookmarks. Both these require you be logged into twitter with the “remember me” cookie, and both work real well with a keyword. Try it out - add the bookmarklet to your collection, give it a keyword - “tweet”, perhaps - and try it from this page. I’m not going to complain! ?

You can add a bookmarklet to your own bookmarks by simply right-clicking the link text and choosing “bookmark this link” in Firefox. Other browsers vary, but most support bookmarklets, if not keywords.

I hope you’ve found this informative - I certainly plan on using both bookmarklets and keywords much more now I know what they are and how they work. I have to thank Monica, a great friend, for getting my mind on this whole topic, A post entitled Keyword Searching in Firefox from Blogzilla, and Firefox and the art of keyword Bookmarking from hack Attack, both of which gave me ideas and help on exactly how everything works.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 7:04 pm and is filed under analysis. 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.