If you’ve ever talked to me about web development, you know I’m a hard core Mozilla/Firefox fanboy. Mozilla and Firefox are faster, safer, and more standards-compliant for starters. Something else I really like about the browsers that has really been climbing the scale for me is useability. From the features builtin to the browsers to the plethora of extensions available, the browsers just can’t be beat (for the curious, I run FireFox). One such feature is the keyword functionality in bookmarks (I don’t know if other browsers have it. I haven’t looked, and really don’t care if they do : ). For example, I’m a pretty big Linux Today fan. Of course, I have the site bookmarked, but I hate switching back and forth between the mouse and the keyboard, so I add the keyword "lt" to the bookmark, and I can noew go to the site completely from the keyboard: I press CTRL-L to switch to the location bar, then type "lt," hit enter, and voila! Linux Today is loaded. While I think that’s a pretty snazzy feature, it gets even cooler. My phone at Hobby Lobby had caller ID on it, which was handy when trying to avoid salesman that kept pestering me. Sometimes, though, a number would come up that I didn’t know, so I’d want to look it up and see who it is before I answered. The problem is, of course, time. It takes too long to go to the site, type in the number, click the button, etc. With Mozilla/FireFox, my aversion to taking unwanted phone calls gets easier. From using the reverse lookup site, I know what the URL for a lookup looks like, so I can take that URL, replace the number I used with "%s" and use that as the bookmark. Now, in my location bar, i can type "phone 123-555-1234" and the browser inserts the number I typed where the "%s" is and loads that page, giving me quick and easy access to the reverse phone lookup.
I will admit that this use of the feature is pretty juvenile, but that doesn’t detract from the utility of it. Since discovering this feature of the browser, I’ve created several more of these types of bookmarks, all of which get used rather frequently. The point of this rambling article is two-fold. The first is to make Mozilla/FireFox users aware of the feature (and perhaps give those still holding on to IE yet another reason to switch). The second is to give you the list of the bookmarks that I’ve created and found helpful. So, without further ado, I present to you my Keyboard Shortcuts Bookmarks.
These are some of the bookmarks I have set up that I though might help someone. If you have some good ones or find some to add, please leave a comment and tell us what it is so we can all share. Have fun!
