Article by George Norman

On 15 Dec 2009

You don’t need to set your homepage to google.com or bing.com or yahoo.com or some other search engine to easily look for stuff online. You can set your homepage to whatever page you like (may I suggest FindMySoft) and use the URL address bar and the search bar. You can type in something in the search bar or the URL address bar, hit Enter and a list of search results will be displayed. It is as simple as that.

• Managing the search bar is quite simple. Here is what you have to do:

Step 1. After firing up the Firefox browser, click the small arrow next to the search bar (just check out the image above.


Step 2. Now select a search engine that suits your needs. I went for Wolfram Alpha. If you don’t see a search engine to suit your needs click Manage Search Engines -> in the Manage Search Engine List click Get More Engines -> you will be directed to addons.mozilla.org (AMO for short). On AMO you can search for your favorite search engine.
If you were looking for Bing, here’s the direct link. If you were looking for Wolfram Alpha, here’s the direct link.

Step 3. Once you’ve selected the search engine of your choice, give it a try. Type in a search query -> hit Enter.

• You can also perform searches by typing in your query in the URL address bar. You can change which search engine Firefox uses to perform the search. Here is what you have to do:

Step 1. In the address bar type in about:config and press Enter.

Step 2. Click I’ll be careful, I promise! when presented with the This might void your warranty! prompt.

Step 3. In the filter box type in keyword -> double click keyword.URL

Step 4. To change the search engine Firefox uses when you type in something in the address bar, type in the following in the Enter string value box.
For Google: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
For Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
For Ask.com: http://www.ask.com/web?&search=search&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir&q=

• You can assign keywords to the search engines in Firefox. Then all you have to do is type in that keyword in the address bar, followed by the search query, and Firefox will use the search engine attached to that keyword to perform a search. Here is what you have to do:

Step 1. Click the small arrow next to the search bar -> click Manage Search Engines -> in the Manage Search Engine List select a search engine.

Step 2. Now click Edit Keyword -> type in the keyword. For example you can select Bing and type in the keyword bing. When you’re done typing in the keyword, click OK.

Step 3. Now go to the address bar and type in something like bing something and hit Enter. You will see a list of Bing search results related to the query something.

Tips and warnings

• You could set it so that Firefox uses one search engine for when you type something in the search bar and another engine for when you type in something in the search bar.
• Did you know that a top figure at Mozilla recently advised Firefox users to switch to Bing? Read all about it here.

Tags: Mozilla, Firefox, Search Engines

I Hope you LIKE this blog post! Thank you!

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