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Wednesday, 14 June 2006

the search bar

If you are a Firefox user you should know what I'm talking about.

Although it always seemed like it should be useful, I've never been a fan of the search bar. I simply don't like the fact that it keeps your last search sitting up there. What if I searched for "anal invader" last night and this morning one of my coworkers or clients sees that?

More practically, I tend to do a lot of pasting text into the google search box, and I hate that you have to manually erase what is the search bar before you can paste your query. (I'm talking quick middle-button paste, not ctrl-v stuff)

No surprise that some up came up with an extension to change this. The Search Button extension gives you the option of having a Search Button (duh) next to the search bar, but also allows you to set the search bar to auto-clear when you submit your query.

Now that I've installed this extension and started using the search bar, I found two awesome keyboard shortcuts related to it:
CTRL-K gives the search bar focus (what CTRL-L is to the address bar)
ALT-ENTER in the search bar opens the results of the query in a new tab.

Rock on! Now I'm loving the search bar!