Use Firefox address bar as search engine
I use Firefox as my main browser and as anyone I need a quick way to find webpages. Long ago, I used to have altavista, yahoo or google as homepage. So every time I launched my browser or open a tab, I could type in my search. BUT now I mainly use the Firefox address bar as search engine. And I mean the address bar not the search bar ! Why so ? Because it’s easier and it have a pretty convenient feature for lazy geek: the good enough automatic redirection. Let me explain
You can
- Use the search bar:
this redirect you to your favorite search engine results pages for the keywords entered. - Use the address bar:
this also redirecte you to the results pages UNLESS the first result is good enough. If you type in “firefox” or “wiki belgium”, the first result of the search engine is probably what you’re looking for. So why lost time in the results page and click again on the obvious first result?
And for the people willing to know how this works, it is pretty simple. Firefox use this setting “keyword.url” (in the about:config) as the url to query for keyword input. In my configuration, it’s “http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=”. This is the usual google search url at the exception of the param “gfns=1″ which is the “good enough” redirection.
It’s kinda like the “I’m feeling lucky button” but you redirected to the first result only if there is pretty good chance that’s what you’re looking for (above some threshold I guess). And if your query was unclear, for eg “eric rodriguez” (I’ll bet you’ll never find me 
, then you are redirected to the usual results page to make your choice.
Pretty useful and neat feature, isn’t it? IMHO, it’s the fastest way to seach & surf (so far). Let’s try it and like me, you’ll get addicted to this good enough redirection
