Simon Willison’s Weblog

Firebird URL shortcut tips

10th October 2003

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.