I just found out about a cool feature of Mozilla: "keywords" in
its bookmarks. This allows you to type a keyword into the
Location bar followed by a space, some more text, and then
hit Enter. The additional text is a referenced in the bookmark
as "%s", so it can be used to do parameter substitution (and 
more if you get fancy).

Hit Ctrl-B, to bring up the Bookmark Manager, select File/New/Bookmark,
enter its name and location. Then edit its Properties to add a
keyword, and then hit the Ok button. That's it. So try it with:

  Name: Search CPAN
  Location: http://search.cpan.org/search?query=%s&mode=all
  Keyword: cpan

Now try out your new keyword service by typing "cpan xml" into
your Location bar and then Enter.

You can use this feature to make easy interaction with various
web services out there. Anything that you can interact via a
simple URL substitution is easy. Note that these are bookmarks
you would not click on as they have "%s" in them as a substitution
token. They are meant to allow interaction via the Location bar.
Of course you could put in a real URL (no %s) to have a convenient
keyword alias, but I generally prefer just clicking on an item
in the Personal Toolbar. But maybe your Personal Toolbar is filled
up and you have some common sites you go to regularly.

Here are a few more that may be useful:

  Name: Google Search
  Location: http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
  Keyword: gg

  Name: Dictionary Lookup
  Location:
http://smac.ucsd.edu/cgi-bin/http_webster?method=exact&isindex=%s
  Keyword: d

Here are some websites that give more examples and even show how
to use Javascript to do more complex substitutions:

  http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/bookmarks/
  http://www.deftone.com/blogzilla/archives/keyword_searching.html
  http://grayrest.com/moz/resources/bookmarks.shtml

Have fun. Let your fellow users know of any other especially
good keyword web services.

--
Mike Arms

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