Full-text blog feedChange Firefox's Context Menu Seach Engine
When I'm reading things on the Internet I always come across words that I don't understand. Wheat I've done up until now is to select the word, righ-click and do a web search
for that word. That has taken me to google, upon which I've clicked [definition] to get me to answers.com.
I've been thinking for a long time that it would be great if that context menu search went straight to answers.com to save me the wait and extra click. I just didn't know how or if it was possible to change that search URL. Well, since this is Firefox we're talking about - of course it is:
In about:config, filter for search
and then simply change the value for browser.search.defaulturl
to http://answers.com/
.
That's a huge improvement, at least to me! I don't seem to be able to use Wikipedia here though, since the search term placeholder %s
doesn't seem to work. Anyone know of a workaround?
3 Comment(s):
At 12:46 PM,
xeen said…
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%s&meta=lr%3Dlang_de&btnI=Auf+gut+Gl%C3%BCck%21
Google Germany + I'm Feeling Lucky + site:wikipedia.org + %s
This is in most cases faster than the internal wikipedia search (and provides better results) and it will search in all available languages. E.g. if some article doesn't exist in german it will most likely find an English article.
To get the URL for your language: Open google in your language and type the following into the searchfield:
site:wikipedia.org XXXXX
Go into Firefox' options dialog and set a nonexistent proxy.
Click "I'm fleeling lucky". Copy the URL from the urlbar, replace XXXXX with %s
Create a bookmark with this URL and add a keyword to it, or use it as instant search. Reset Firefox' connection (so that it works again). Be happy.
Greetings
At 9:06 PM,
xeen said…
(and just another thing, you could try dictionary search, mark a word, rightclick and choose whatver you entered in the options dialog. you have to use $ instead of %s but the rest is the same. quite useful, especially for dictionaries, but should work for wikipedia/answers.com as well)
At 10:30 PM,
David Naylor said…
Oh - great tips! Thanks! Your probably right about google being faster than WP, which always feels extremely overloaded...
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