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Firebird URL shortcut tips

I’ve been using these for ages, but in case you haven’t heard about them here are some handy shortcuts involving Firebird’s URL bar:

  • Enter a word (or several words) and hit Enter; Firebird runs a Google “I’m feeling lucky” search thus redirecting you to the top result. Great for sites you can’t remember the URL for, such as “Thunderbird Help”.
  • Enter a word and hit Ctrl+Enter; Firebird adds www. to the start and .com to the end and takes you to that site.
  • Enter a word and hit Shift+Enter; Firebird takes you to the .net domain.
  • Enter a word and hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter; Firebird takes you to the .org domain.
  • Also, hitting Alt+Enter (or Alt+any of the above) opens a new tab with that URL in it.

Finally, Ctrl+K focuses you on the quick search box at the top, and F6 or Alt+D jump you to the URL bar itself.

Check out Firebird Help for the definitive list of keyboard shortcuts and mouse shortcuts.

Posted 10th October 2003 at 2:51 pm

This is Firebird URL shortcut tips by Simon Willison, posted on 10th October 2003.

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19 comments

  1. That Ctrl-Enter thing has been in IE for a while - not sure about the others though (for inserting .net etc). The only thing stopping me from using Firebird all the time is the fact that my RSS aggregator FeedDemon (which uses IE internally) is just so damn good. I suspect once I get an MT client as a Firebird webpanel I may be tempted back...

    Sam - 10th October 2003 15:13 - #

  2. Although I found the Google "I'm feeling lucky" option useful, at times I wondered if it was possible to just change it into a normal Google search (making it a Google toolbar). My question was swiftly anwered in this Tips & Tricks section:

    Change the search mode in the address field

    Didier Hilhorst - 10th October 2003 15:39 - #

  3. QuickSearch anyone?

    Manuzhai - 10th October 2003 16:04 - #

  4. Ctrl+L also takes you to the address bar. Just in case you were feeling short-changed on shortcut keys..

    Jordan - 10th October 2003 16:29 - #

  5. I'm not sure if these shortcut keys are defaults, or results of extensions. Anyway, here they are: ctrl + tab == move to the next tab ctrl + shift + tab == move to the previous tab

    markku - 10th October 2003 18:27 - #

  6. Just wondering if Firebird has a working sidebar (web panel?) yet? I heard it was in some of the nightlies, but it wasn't in the latest "release" I downloaded. I use the sidebar in Mozilla to access my bookmarks so I can use the same bookmarks at home as at work, and hope to switch to Firebird as soon as that feature is in effect.

    kyle - 10th October 2003 19:02 - #

  7. Keyword shortcuts are a must-have for me. (You can edit them in the bookmark properties.) I can do Google searches with "g [searchterm]", dictionary.com searches with "dict [searchterm]", whois lookups on IP addresses, MapQuest searches and more...all from the URL bar.

    Adrian Holovaty - 10th October 2003 19:03 - #

  8. This explains why I keep ending up at the Simon Wiesenthal Center :)

    Lars - 10th October 2003 19:06 - #

  9. Kyle, Firebird has a sidebar for bookmarks, history, and downloads. In addition there's something called Web Panels that I haven't tried out -- those are the things that I think aren't fully implemented yet. The bookmarks sidebar has been in for just about ever, I think.

    Keith Lea - 10th October 2003 22:08 - #

  10. Bookmark Google. go into the bookmark properties and in the "info" tab alter the locations box so that it reads: 

    http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&btnG=Google+Sear ch

    and change the keyword box to, say "g" (for Google) and close. Select the url bar and type "g *search query*. Now let google do all the work.

    You can also add keywords for other bookmarks so that simply typing a letter will take you to that url.

    Works with Mozilla, Firebird *and* the ladies on a friday night!

    pete - 10th October 2003 22:38 - #

  11. Ah, so that's what it's doing for CTRL-Enter. I don't know why they didn't make CTRL-Enter open URLs in new Tabs, like Mozilla. Durned annoying to have different behaviors for such an oft-used function.

    Dougal Campbell - 10th October 2003 22:59 - #

  12. I believe they kept CTRL-Enter as the www/com shortcut because IE does it that way, and has been doing it that way for quite a while. Same with the URL/Address shortcut as well. It's something that was already ingrained in my mind when I switched to Mozilla Firebird. A preference setting with customizable shortcuts would be nice though.

    As a personal preference, I find it easier when switching between .com, .net or .org shortcuts when you only need to deal with combinations of either CTRL or Shift as well.

    starvingartist - 11th October 2003 04:55 - #

  13. Awesome tips, thanks. Another thing that I use a lot is the search-as-you-type feature. For those who haven't heard about this, it's simple: type anything on the page and if there's a link with the characters you type, it will be selected. If you want to search for a non-link text, type "/" and the words you wish. To continue searching the page, just press F3.

    Jonas Galvez - 11th October 2003 05:09 - #

  14. In regards to the sidebar panel. The bookmark thing doesn't work because I want to use the same bookmarks at home as I do at work. So basically I need it to be able to load a webpage (which Mozilla/Netscape will do). I assume that's what a webpanel is - but are they implemented yet?

    kyle - 12th October 2003 05:26 - #

  15. The search by selection is part of IE since IE5, although is is mentioned that the powertoys and webaccessaries of IE5/IE55 are only for those version, they DO work in IE6. (these features are added to the right click menu, I have with winXP IE6: zoomin,zoomout for images, images list(needs an F5 in IE6), url list, highlight, websearch, view partial selection, (dom) tree, as well as the regular IE6 ones XSML validate, XSL output etc) Just install them (the IE5/IE55 ones) and ignore the warning. You will find most of these tools back in the windows/web map. You can edit the relevant html files. For websearch I modified the search engine to use google instead of yahoo. William A Slabbekoorn

    cybarber - 12th October 2003 10:02 - #

  16. I've tweaked the quick searches to go to often visited websites without even using the Ctrl+Enter or other such shortcuts, Say you go to CNN all the time, add www.cnn.com to your Quick Searches folder and give a keyword, say cnn, no need for the %s, that's all. Typing cnn in the url bar will take you to the cnn website :D Cheers to Jonas for pointing out the search-as-you-type feature, I hadn't discovered that yet, had been praying for such a feature though.

    Ubaid Dhiyan - 16th October 2003 06:40 - #

  17. hey guys, Is there any way by which i can 'custom autocomplete' my url..? I mean , say for instance, I want to enter www.melbourne.com, I would type 'melbourne' and then ctrl+enter. Similarly, if I want to enter www.melbourne.com.au, how can I do that? Thanks, Raj

    Raj - 10th July 2005 17:20 - #

  18. when I hit ctrl+enter I now get a %*^% AOL search page. how can i get my short cut back?

    Jerry Ensminger - 2nd January 2006 23:50 - #

  19. love friendship relations

    Zakir Rasheed Khan Kakar - 11th October 2006 03:00 - #

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