Firefox URL bar: combine multiple search terms

Posted by Matt Thommes on March 24, 2009 | Post type: Gain

Firefox 3 introduced a "smart" address bar, which performs a wildcard auto-complete search as you type - scanning your browser's webpage visited history, and returning URL results in the order of most recently visited.

The beauty is that you no longer have to know the domain name to have auto-complete find matching URL's. You can type any word or sequence of characters that make up the URL, or even the page title.

Screenshot of Firefox address bar

Notice how Firefox still finds matches for the domain paininthetech.com, even though I didn't start typing "pain..." first. It found "tech" within the URL, or page title.

This is a tremendous time-saver, and an intuitive way to revisit past URL's. After all, we don't always think of the sites we visit by recalling their domain name. Often we recall portions of the site by their actual page name, which is often present towards the end of the URL, or in the page title itself.

Wait! It gets better

Not only does Firefox 3 find matches for a single word (or sequence of characters) typed in the address bar - you can include as many individual words (or sequences of characters) as you'd like!

That's right - just separate each "search term" with a space, to further narrow down your results:

Screenshot of Firefox address bar

Notice how Firefox finds recently visited pages that contain both "tech" and "google" in the URL. It doesn't matter where those search terms appear in the URL or page title - it will find them anyway!

Here's a practical example. Let's say you want to visit John's (your friend's) blog. You can't recall the exact domain, but you know it had the word "blog" in the URL. That search term will narrow it down somewhat, but not quite enough. You visit too many blogs, so the results are not all that helpful.

Since the name "john" might be in the page title, try including it in the search as well:

blog john

This search should find all URL's with the words "blog" and "john" in it. More than likely, you'll stumble across the correct URL.

About the author(s)

Matt Thommes is an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from a suburb of Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.

Comments

Note: Comments may be viewed by authors, but if you have a more specific question you'd like to ask them, please email matt.thommes@paininthetech.com.

# George at 3/29/2009 4:08 pm cst

Great tips. Thanks!

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# Enon at 4/30/2009 3:39 pm cst

I wish safari would implement this.

Quick Link to this comment: http://TTIP.me/c5052