Firefox Quick Searches

Firefox comes with a great feature that I just recently discovered: Quick Searches.

They allow you to create a bookmark of a search, with the search string left out. All you have to do is type your bookmark’s “Keyword,” a space, then your search string.

And here’s the good news: Central Desktop’s advanced search feature makes this a must try Central Desktop hack.

First, read this Lifehacker article for how Firefox Quick Searches work.

Now to create the Quick Search.

Start by opening the advanced search dialogue. It’s probably in the upper right hand corner.

You can add anything you want to the search words. The most important part is limiting the search to only the workspace(s) you want, tags you need, file type or CD items (tasks, databases, etc.). This will give us our search string starter.

Setup your search parameters in the Advanced Search dialogue

In the example, I’m limiting the search to only Database Records in the workspace “The Rug.” (It ties everything together, you know…)

The search words don’t matter as much here. Again, all we want to do here is make sure our search query limits the results to the workspace(s), tags and types we require. You can use any combination you want to design your perfect search.

Hit “Search Now,” and you’ll be taken to a results page. This will give us our URL.

Create the Bookmark

At this point, you can bookmark this URL and you will always get the same results. But you don’t want that. You want to be able to find the database record or task you’re looking for.

So we take this part of the URL:  search?q=anything%20will%20do&q

And remove everything between q= and &q then replace it with %s giving us:

search?q=%s&q (you’ll want to keep the whole url intact, just replace your original query with %s . The %s acts as a variable. Any search string you use will replace the %s. It’s as if you had taken the time to re-do your original Advanced Search. Only a lot faster.

Next step: Create the Quick Search.

Open the Bookmarks Organizer: Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks (Ctrl+Shift+B) and right click on “Bookmarks Menu.” Select New Bookmark.

Add a keyword and a description for your Quick Search

Enter the search URL we just created into the “Location” box. Add a name and description for the bookmark.

You’ll need to define a Keyword for the Quick Search. The keyword is the short bit you type into the address bar in Firefox to activate the bookmark. I like to keep them short to save time. In this example I chose “rdb” for Rug Databases.

Hit the add button and we’re all done. Now we test it out.

Just go to the address bar (Ctrl+l) and type your keyword “rdb” then a space then anything you want to search for.

Obviously you'll want to enter an appropriate search parameter

And that’s that.

A few advanced tips:

To limit to a particular database or task list, just put that database or task list name into the “these exact phrases” search box when creating your search. Central Desktop indexes the database and task list names, so they act as limiters on your search.

Use (Alt+Enter) to open your search in a new window. This way you can keep on the correct page and see your results in a new window.

As long as you have one tab open to Central Desktop, these searches work from anywhere on the internet, so when the boss calls and ask “Where’s the Penske File?” you don’t have to open up the correct workspace in CD, navigate to the proper folder, and scroll to locate the Penske File. You just have to type in your Quick Search keyword and “Penske” and there’s the Penske File.

Next up, using this same principle with Ubiquity.

Do you have any other ways you’ve been using Quick Searches in CD or elsewhere? Let me know in the comments.