Bookmarks in Firefox have a very powerful feature that most people don’t know about. Let’s take a look at this:

1. Click on Bookmarks.
2. Right-click on any bookmark you have there.
3. Choose properties.

Now, third from the top, there is a text box called “Keyword”. Most likely, this is blank because by default it’s not used at all. Welcome to the wonderful world to keyword bookmarking. Let me show you how to use it.

Say for instance that you wanted to create a keyword bookmark for the search on firefoxfacts.com. Ok, lets go to that page. After using the Firefox Facts search using the words “test”, I come to the page:

http://www.firefoxfacts.com/index.php?s=test

If I bookmark it, it will look like any other bookmark.

Then, if I look at the properties of my newly created bookmark, I can make a few changes to it to transform it into a keyword bookmark:

1. Notice that the my search term “test” is in the address in the location field.
2. Replace that with the string “%s” to get http://www.firefoxfacts.com/index.php?s=%s.
3. Add a keyword to the keyword field. I chose “fxfacts” but anything will work. Use something short and you can remember.
4. Press OK.

Yay, now we have a keyword bookmark. This is how to use it:

1. Type the keyword of the bookmark in the address bar. (In my example “fxfacts”)
2. Type any search terms after that. (My example: “fxfacts bookmarks”)
3. Press the enter key.

Firefox will now take me to the Firefox Facts search for bookmarks just like that. Let’s see IE7 can do that!

Post by Samuel Brisby – Sam is currently a student majoring in computer science who loves and supports anything open-source especially the Firefox browser. Questions or comments can be sent to spamuel42 (at) gmail.com.

For more help, check these out...

• Organizing Your Firefox Bookmarks
• How Do I Download Firefox?
• Headup Delivers You Related Content in Firefox