by Adam Pash

When Gina posted her favorite 15 Firefox Quick Searches, she used a Firefox feature which associates keywords with frequent web searches. But you can use bookmark keywords not only for web searches, but to navigate to your favorite sites and inner pages, and even launch bookmarklets without moving to your mouse.


Today I'll cover the fine art of browser bookmarking in conjunction with keyword shortcuts, and how I significantly cut down wasted browsing time with an intuitive keyword framework.


Note: Even though I'm writing from the perspective of a Firefox user, Firefox is certainly not the only browser that can add keywords to your bookmarks and favorites. In Opera, for example, you can create a "Nickname" for a bookmark that does the same thing.

Lay the groundwork

If you're using Firefox, first things first: You need to install the OpenBook Firefox extension. Yes, you need to - you can add keywords to your bookmarks in Firefox without OpenBook, but it's decidedly more of a pain in the ass, requiring a trip to the properties of each bookmark. OpenBook makes adding keywords to bookmarks trivial, meaning you'll be much more likely to set them up.


Once you've installed OpenBook, go to Tools -> Extensions and open your OpenBook options. You can tweak this however you want to, but be sure at the very least to check the Keyword textbox, which will allow you to create keyword shortcuts on the fly. Additionally, since I really don't ever click on my bookmarks anymore, I don't really have much need for organizing them; instead, I have all new bookmarks automatically dumped into a folder called Keywords (keeps things nice and tidy in my Bookmarks menu). You can see how I have it set up in the screenshot, but if you have your own preferences, feel free to tweak the OpenBook options however you like.


Once you've got OpenBook all set up, it's time to get busy.

Set up your favorites

I like to give all of my favorite web sites a one or two letter keyword. The process is very simple, but just because I like holding hands (I'm 6th grade that way), it might go a little something like this:


You visit http://lifehacker.com and find out it's got your most favorite content in all the world. You don't want to have to type in that whole address thirty times every day, so instead you hit Ctrl-D (replace Ctrl with Cmd on Macs), type in a keyword of 'l' and hit enter. Now anytime you're ready to visit Lifehacker, you'll hit Ctrl-L (the keyboard shortcut for the address bar), type, 'l', and hit Enter. Easy, right?


Of course, first letters run out quickly, so in the off chance that there's another web site that begins with an "L" that you like more than Lifehacker (say it ain't so!), you can add letters based on other intuitive methods (for example, Lifehacker could be easily remembered as 'lh' or 'li').

Drilling down

Since web sites are generally set up in a directory structure, I like to add keywords that help me drill down to other commonly-used pages on the same site. For example, at Lifehacker we keep a lot of internal communication, lists, schedules, and other such fun productivity porno in a wiki. I've set up the Lifehacker Wiki homepage to a keyword of 'lw' (Lifehacker Wiki) in my browser. But that just gets me to the home page of the wiki. If I want to go to the page where I keep a list of feature ideas, I type in 'lwf' (Lifehacker Wiki - Feature). For our content schedule, I type 'lwc', and so on.


You get the idea. This sort of drilling down can go on indefinitely, though you obviously won't want to allow things to get to far out of hand before you just create a new, shorter keyword. I normally set up my keywords to match the first letter of each word I'm looking for so that it's easy to remember and type all of my shortcuts in one to four keystrokes.

Keyword search and the %s variable

Gina has already done an excellent feature on Firefox quick searches, but I'm going to delve a little deeper into keyword quick searches so that you can create your own keyword search when the simple right-click -> Add keyword search... method doesn't work.


For example, the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn't play nice with the regular "Add keyword search" dialog. However, if you take a look at the URL of any word on M-W, you'll find that they all look like this:

http://m-w.com/dictionary/<word>/

If we just had a way that we could insert any word we wanted in place of <word> , we'd be set. Luckily, Firefox provides a very handy little %s variable, which holds everything you type after your keyword. To create a keyword bookmark search for M-W, then, you'd hit Ctrl-D and paste the following into the URL field:

http://m-w.com/dictionary/%s/

Assign a keyword of 'mw', and any time you type mw productivity into your address bar, the word "productivity" will replace the %s variable. I use this method all the time to view Lifehacker tag pages by bookmarking the following with a keyword of 'lt' (Lifehacker Tag).

http://lifehacker.com/software/%s/

Type in something like lt hack-attack and you'll find yourself conveniently routed to all of my features here on Lifehacker (though if you visited the tag often, I'd suggest setting up a drill-down shortcut like 'lha' [Lifehacker Hack Attack]).


Keyword your bookmarklets

Don't be shy about adding keyword shortcuts to your favorite bookmarklets. For example, I'm absolutely crazy about the GMailThis! bookmarklet (it was actually the basis of my Bookmarking with Gmail feature). If I'm on a page I want to email to someone, all it takes is Ctrl-L, 'gmt', and Enter.


Send a Webpage with GmailThis GMailThis is one of those fantastic, simple ideas that makes you slap your head and say "Why didn't Read more

Sync your shortcuts across browsers

Finally, if you've set up a great keyword bookmarking system, you're going to want to sync your bookmarks on every computer you use. To accomplish this, I prefer the FoxMarks Firefox extension.


How do you speed up your browsing?

I want to point out that there's really no genius in what I've described here - many of you may already have a similar method, or perhaps another, more groundbreaking method for speeding up your browsing. If you do, I'd love to hear about it in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com.


If you really love your keyboard shortcuts, you might want to check out the following articles:

Adam Pash is an associate editor for Lifehacker who's way into productive shortcuts, keyboard and otherwise. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.