Power User Monday Tip of the Week
Searching the Big Boys Right in Camino
PowerUser Monday is a weekly column that focuses on a specific technique that can speed up your computing. If you've got a tip that you'd like to share (with attribution if you choose) please submit it to Jon.
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When Steve Jobs showed off Safari's Google search at MacWorld you probably thought it was pretty slick. I just snickered, because Camino (my browser of choice) has something way more powerful, but a little less sexy. I was originally shown this technique a while back by Gibbons Burke, but it has not yet become popular. I've tried explaining it quickly to a lot of people, and only got met with stares. Here's to a clear explanation!
You can make a keyword (as I did in the screen capture) here. The next time you want to visit that site, which in this case is my newest site: News Is Crappy, you can just type the keyword into the link bar. I haven't quite figured out what the description does for you (besides help you out if you are forgetful). If you know, shoot me an email and I'll fill everyone else in. Once you have using keywords down, it's only a simple hop to getting
in built in searching. Let's examine the default URL structure of
Google:
That breaks down into a few parts:
What we're interested in is #3 since it's the only part that changes. Try changing Jon%20Gales to Mac%20news--Google searches for "Mac news". You probably already knew that. Lazy nerds like me have been typing in search queries in that format for years (seriously not kidding here folks--it's almost a disorder). Camino has a little known feature that does substitution... Try bookmarking this:
Now make it have a keyword of something easy (I use g because it's quick but still has meaning to Google). Try typing in your keyword, followed by a space, followed by a search term. If you used g as your keyword, and my name as your search query, it will look like this:
If you set up everything correctly, the page you'll be taken to this page--or the search listings for my name.You didn't have to visit the home page of Google. You didn't have to go click on the tool bar. You can search Google with a quick, "command-l, g search term, return". It's sick. The moral of the story? %s substitutes whatever is after the keyword into the URL. The fun doesn't stop there, since URL hacking isn't too hard (just break it down like I did and look for the search terms), you can make these bookmarks for almost any site that has search. Remember that %20 simply means a space. The only ones you can't use with this method are sites that use POST , which is really rare for search (POST is used when there is a lot of data being input, or it's of a sensitive nature).You'll know it's post if there is no ? in the URL and your search terms aren't in it anywhere. One last quick tip, you can do this same method on a group of sites that you bookmark together (when bookmarking when you have tabs open check the bookmark all box). For instance, if you want to search Reuters, Google News, and Yahoo! News all at the same time it is possible. Below is a list of keywords that I set up for a some sites. I'd love to hear what you have set up. List of sites that I often use keyword substition for:
|
First
off, let's take a look at a little used feature of Camino book marks--keywords. When
viewing your bookmarks (in the window not the menu bar), you can hit
command-i or right click
and
hit get info. This will
bring up a window that you can see an example of at right. All personal comments should be sent to the author. All other discussion should be done in the Forums
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