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Two features of Mozilla Firefox allow you to quickly access search engines without having to go to their home pages. The first is the ability to install custom search plugins, and the second is keyword or "smart" bookmarks. This document will help you install search plugins for both [ http://help.unc.edu ] help.unc.edu and [ http://search.unc.edu ] search.unc.edu, and provides instructions on creating a keyword search for help.unc.edu.
Search plugins add search engines to the search box at the top right of the Firefox application window. By default, Firefox is configured to search Google when text is entered in the text input box, as the icon in that box indicates. To select a different search engine from among those installed on your system, you can click on the icon to see a drop-down list of the engines, and click on the engine you'd like to search. Mozilla also provides a list of [ https://addons.mozilla.org/search-engines.php ] installable search engines.
ITS has created search plugins for help.unc.edu and search.unc.edu. To install the search plugins, click on the links below and select "OK" when the application pops up an informational window. You must be using Mozilla Firefox as your web browser, and you must have Javascript enabled.
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[ javascript:window.sidebar.addSearchEngine('http://its.unc.edu/knowledge_management/plugins/help-search.src', 'http://its.unc.edu/knowledge_management/plugins/help-search.png', 'Web', 'UNC-CH') ] install plugin for help.unc.edu
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[ javascript:window.sidebar.addSearchEngine('http://its.unc.edu/knowledge_management/plugins/unc-search.src', 'http://its.unc.edu/knowledge_management/plugins/unc-search.png', 'Web', 'UNC-CH') ] install plugin for search.unc.edu
Once you've installed the plugins, they will become available for use in Firefox' search toolbar.
UNC Firefox search plugins in action
A keyword or "smart" bookmark allows you to enter a word of your own choosing in your location bar (where you would normally type in a URL), followed by some text, and creates a
URL based on the text you've added. Keyword bookmarks can be added manually or, for users of Firefox 1.5 and later,
[ http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/smart-keywords.html ]
semi-automatically. This is by far the easier method of the two: navigate to the page containing the search form you want to create a bookmark for, and right-click on the search box to bring up the context menu; select
Add a Keyword for this Search, and then provide a short descriptive name and the keyword you would like to use. For example, if you chose "help" as your keyword, then typing
help searching into your location bar will search the ITS knowledgebase for documents that match the term
searching.
The procedure for adding a keyword manually requires a little bit of know-how, but it may be necessary to get the bookmark to work on some sites and on older versions of Firefox (although you should be upgrading regularly for security patches, if at all possible!). The semi-automatic procedure described above does work with Firefox 1.5 and both [ http://search.unc.edu ] search.unc.edu and [ http://help.unc.edu ] help.unc.edu's search boxes. Another reason you might want to use the manual procedure is to add a keyword bookmark for something that isn't a search. To pick an example that may be relevant to some users (quick helpsite item navigation), an example will be provided below.
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Select item from the menu on the Firefox application menu bar.
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There are three ways to add a new bookmark from the bookmark manager.
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Select from the menu of the Bookmark Manager window
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Select the New Bookmark icon from the toolbar in the same window.
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use Alt - N .
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Fill out the and fields as described above for the semi-automatic procedure, and, if desired, fill out the description field (which might help you remember what the bookmark's for later on).
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This is the hardest part, and the one that requires some knowledge of how URLs are constructed. It will be easiest if you have already conducted a normal search on the site and have the resulting URL handy. The most straightforward way of proceeding here is cut and paste the URL from the location bar of the window or tab in which you conducted the manual search to the field in the new window. Next, locate the search phrase you entered (note that some characters will be replaced, e.g. spaces will be replaced by
%20), and replace that text up to the next occurrence of an ampersand (&) character with%s. For example, the value you would enter here for help.unc.edu would behttp://help.unc.edu?search=%s. -
Click to add your new keyword bookmark.
Example 1. Add quick Helpsite Item navigation
This will let you quickly navigate to helpsite items with a known ID. Follow the above procedure to add a new keyword bookmark, use
kb in the
field, and in the
field, put the value
http://help.unc.edu/?id=%s
This will allow you to type
kb 5627 in your location bar to navigate directly to this document. Of course, you may, on occasion, want to navigate to documents with different IDs.
Copyright 2002-2007 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
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