Firefox For Dummies

Trying to find your car in a parking garage is hard enough as it is. Now imagine that the parking garage has 12 billion cars, and all you know about yours is that it's white.

Finding the information you want on the Internet can be equally frustrating if you don't know where to begin. So-called search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, map the Web's information for you to make it searchable. Firefox works closely with these search engines to help you find information quickly and easily.

Searching the Web with Firefox

Finding information on the Web is as easy as "telling" a search engine what you want to find, clicking a button, and combing through the information the engine returns. The trick is in the telling. A search engine can't understand sentences the way a human does, so follow these tips to get better results:

• Be succinct. Search only for the keywords that define what you want. For example, if you're looking for ski resorts in Lake Tahoe, try ski resorts Lake Tahoe instead of the more conversational "Where can I find ski resorts in Lake Tahoe?" Many engines, however, are getting better at understanding the latter format.

• Be specific. Although being succinct is important, you also need to strive to be as specific as possible. Use distinct, targeted words that precisely describe what you're looking for. For example, Lake Tahoe Karaoke returns about a tenth of the results as Lake Tahoe night life, as does Lake Tahoe comedy club.

• Don't worry about case. Virtually all search engines ignore the casing of your search phrase, which means that Lake Tahoe is equal to lake tahoe.

• Use quotes for phrases. By default, search engines look for pages that contain any of the words you enter. When you want to search for a phrase that consists of multiple words, you can enclose it in quotation marks, and the engine finds only pages that contain the entire phrase. For example, searching for "Lake Tahoe" returns only pages that contain the full phrase. Web sites that contain only Lake or only Tahoe are not returned.

Searching for keywords and phrases at the same time is okay. For example, to find a healthy restaurant near Lake Tahoe, you could search healthy restaurant "Lake Tahoe". You probably wouldn't want to include healthy restaurant in quotation marks because most sites wouldn't include that phrase word for word. Instead, they'd have restaurant at the beginning of the review, and healthy elsewhere.

Because searching is such a common activity, you're never more than one click away from a search box where you can type your keywords in Firefox.

Searching from the default Firefox home page

By default, Firefox offers a slightly modified version of Google — the leading Internet search engine — as its home page (see Figure 4-1). This means that as long as you don't change your home page, you'll be ready to begin searching each time you start Firefox.

Figure 4-1: The default Firefox home page offers instant access to all kinds of Google searching.

To perform a search from the default home page, follow these steps:

1. Click within the Google search box.

2. Type in your search keywords (for example, ski resorts Lake Tahoe).

3. Click the Google Search button (or press Enter) to begin your search.

   Google returns a list of Web sites that are (hopefully) relevant to your search.

Searches usually take less than a second, but they could take longer on slower Internet connections. The Firefox Tabbed Browsing feature makes it easy to navigate this list quickly; see Chapter 7 for more information.

Searching from the Search Box

If you have changed your home page to something other than Google or if you have navigated to a different Web site, you can still begin a search immediately through the handy Firefox Search Box. It's located on the right side of the primary toolbar, to the right of the Location Bar and the Go button, as shown in Figure 4-2.

Figure 4-2: You can search by using the Search Box in the upper-right corner of the window.

The Search Box works just as you would expect: Simply type in one or more search terms and press Enter to see a list of Web sites that contain relevant information.

Swapping Search Box engines

As with the home page, the Search Box uses Google by default because it is widely considered to be the fastest and most accurate general-purpose engine currently available. However, just as you can change your home page to whatever you'd like, you can also change the engine used by the Search Box. This is useful if you prefer another general-purpose engine, such as Yahoo!, or if you're looking for a specific type of information, such as a word definition, and want to switch to an engine better equipped to handle it, such as a dictionary.

To change your Search Box engine, follow these steps:

1. Click the icon to the left in the Search Box (refer to Figure 4-2).

   The Firefox Search Box uses Google by default, so the icon you see is the Google icon.

2. Choose a new engine from the menu that appears (see Figure 4-3).

   Choose a new engine from the menu.

   Figure 4-3: You can choose from a variety of search engines by clicking the icon.

   Firefox remembers which engine you select and defaults to it in all future windows.

   Tip

   To switch engines with the keyboard, press Ctrl+↓ within the Search Box.

Firefox offers several high-quality engines in its Search Box, and I summarize them in Table 4-1.

Adding an engine to the Search Box

You can add engines to the list you see in Figure 4-3 (shown earlier) so you can search with them from the Search Box. Here's how:

1. Click the icon to the left of the Search Box.

2. Choose Add Engines.

   This step loads the Firefox Central Web site.

3. Under the Add New Search Engines heading at the bottom of the page (see Figure 4-4), find the engine you want to add.

   Figure 4-4: Here's where you can select a different search engine for the Search Box.

   If you don't see the engine you want in the list, click the last link — Find Lots of Other Search Engines — to load a list of engines, all neatly organized into categories (such as Reference and Shopping).

   Hundreds of search engines are available to choose from. I outline some of my favorites in Table 4-2.

4. When you find the engine you want, simply click it and then click OK in the Firefox confirmation window.

   Your new search engine is immediately available from the Search Box.

At the present time, you cannot remove a search engine from the Search Box list (shown earlier in Figure 4-3).

We fiercely debated whether to conduct a traditional Google search or Google's I'm Feeling Lucky search as the default search method for the Location Bar. All other browsers at the time conducted normal searches, but the Firefox development team eventually decided that the benefits of an I'm Feeling Lucky search far out-weighed the break with consistency. Two benefits in particular motivated our decision:

• Many of us on the Firefox team share a strong (if naïve) desire to rid the world of the arcane site addressing system. We believe http://www.fordvehicles.com/ is a ridiculous bunch of gibberish that no sane human being should ever have to remember. What was that address again? Ford.com? Fordtrucks.com? Ford-vehicles.com? Or was there no dash? And what does all that http:// stuff mean, anyway? Did somebody's cat walk across the keyboard? This addressing system is just one of the many painful reminders that the Internet was originally designed for military officials, scientists, and other similarly technical crowds.

  Choosing the I'm Feeling Lucky search as the default search method in Firefox's Location Bar, then, was our first tentative step toward bypassing this arcane addressing system. Instead of having to remember an address, you simply have to remember a couple keywords that describe what you're looking for and have faith that Google and Firefox will find it for you. For example, instead of worrying about whether there's a dash in http://www.fordvehicles.com/, you can type "Ford trucks", "Ford vehicles", "Ford SUVs", "Ford cars", or even "Ford vehicle info" and be on your way. Or take the example of the horror flick The Ring: Is the site address http://www.thering.com, theringmovie.com, or the-ring. com? Actually, it's none of those. It's http://www.ring-themovie.com. But if you have trouble remembering that, just type the ring into the Location Bar and press Enter.

• The Location Bar is very much a place of action, whereas combing through search results is traditionally a more casual and longer-term approach. Internet surfers are all accustomed to using the address bar to get somewhere quickly, and the other developers and I wanted to uphold that.

Searching from the Location Bar

Firefox allows advanced users to search the Web from the Location Bar — the box in which you typically enter the address of a Web site to visit. This can be useful if, for example, you have hidden the Search Box to conserve space.

Simple searching with Location Bar keywords

At the simplest level, searching from the Location Bar requires no additional work on your part. If you enter a series of keywords into the box and press Enter (or click Go), Firefox automatically treats the phrase as a search request. Unlike a traditional search, however, you don't see a list of relevant Web sites. Instead, Firefox automatically takes you to the page that most likely contains what you're looking for. Firefox does this neat trick by using Google's I'm Feeling Lucky technology, which automatically redirects you to the very first Google search result for your search phrase.

Specialized searching with Location Bar keywords

Firefox also allows you to conduct searches from the Location Bar by using Search Keywords. Rather than typing an address, you type the keyword that represents the search engine you want to use, followed by the phrase to search for. By default, Firefox includes four Search Keywords that you can use from the Location Bar. (You can also add your own special words, but this is a very advanced topic beyond the scope of this book.) I outline these in Table 4-3.

For example, suppose you want to look up a company's trading information on the stock market. You would simply:

1. Click within the Location Bar.

2. Type quote stocksymbol (but replace stocksymbol with the stock's symbol).

   For example, you can type quote GOOG and find out the current value of Google stock (see Figure 4-5).

   Figure 4-5: Finding a stock value.

3. Press Enter or click Go.

   Firefox displays the latest stock quote information.