In Firefox you can add a bookmark and set a keyword for that bookmark. If the URL of the bookmark contains "%s", it'll get replaced by everything you type in the URL bar after the keyword. For example I have a bookmark for Wikipedia with the keyword "wp". So when I type "wp Y Combinator" I end up on the Wikipedia page about Y Combinator.

I really enjoy this feature and even catch myself regularly trying to use it on other computers, which obviously don't have such keywords defined.

Yeah, but the indicator that you’re using such a bookmark when typing “wp Foo” in the address bar is really poor. When you use the OpenSearch search engine integration you can also set a keyword but it’s highlighted properly. Downside is that you need to enable the separate search bar to get the option to add a site’s OpenSearch provider when visiting it because the small looking glass gets a tiny plus you need to click.

I recently switched from chrome to Firefox but the search engine situation is something I’m not really happy about.

> Downside is that you need to enable the separate search bar to get the option to add a site’s OpenSearch provider when visiting it because the small looking glass gets a tiny plus you need to click.

Nope, you can just right-click the site's own search bar, which is how I've been doing it forever.

I think that adds it as a bookmark which is not the same thing as an OpenSearch provider because it doesn’t give you the blue highlight when searching with it.

Actually this is exactly what lorenzhs said, and it is my experience too. I know this because I spent half an hour trying to get a “blue search” for BBFC.

Yup that’s what I meant. The right click -> add as search engine creates a bookmark which doesn’t get the blue highlight when using it. That distinction just doesn’t make sense to me.

DuckDuckGo: `!w Y combinator` ?

Didn't know about this either. Awesome and helps alleviate a pain point... but a) how the hell would any normal user know to do this? And b) how long until it is yet another undocumented feature dropped by Firefox?

Thanks for mentioning this feature, I didn't know about it before. Really like it!

You could just set duckduckgo as your default search provider. Then you can use their bangs[1] to quickly search on specific sites. "!thes test" will find synonyms for you.

It works flawlessly in all browsers I use.

[1]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang

I switched to DDG for the privacy, and a general desire to ensure that competitors to Google survive. But I've found I use the "bang" commands all the time.

Typing "w! foo" beats "wikipedia foo" every time.

Firefox/Chrome: You can right-click any search field on any web you visit and add it as a search engine, with the keyword of your choosing. I've been using "w foo" to directly search on English Wikipedia. It's half the characters! :)

The advantage of Duck's bangs is that you don't have to install or configure anything beyond searching with DuckDuckGo. I've managed to guess the correct bang-abbreviation plenty of times (Urban Dictionary? ud, OpenStreetMap? osm, Hacker News? Guess!).

I've also had 'w foo' as a keyword for years and years, along with many others for varying lengths of time. So convenient.

As others have mentioned and I believe you were referring to, Firefox does let you create bookmarks with keywords to accomplish the same thing.

Funnily enough, I've often seen Firefox users unaware that they can do the same with custom search keywords in Chrome, so the problem runs both ways.

As someone who uses these features in both Firefox and Chrome, I do think it would be nice if Firefox copied how Chrome automatically adds these search actions, and perhaps a bit of the UI polish too (like how Chrome's omnibox will recognize you're performing a keyword search and adapt accordingly). It doesn't make much of a difference for existing power users, but it could help new users discover and use the feature.

Firefox now highlights the search keyword and limits history matches to just that site.

Seriously? You would sell your soul to the devil to save typing four extra characters?

If you think using Chrome is selling your soul to the devil I wonder what you think about me who is fully integrated in the Google ecosystem with Google Home and everything.

At least in that case I can see what you might think you're getting out of the deal. But typing "thes" instead of "thesaurus"? Seriously?

In Firefox it requires a space instead of a tab. I search wikipedia and google like "w foo" and "g bar" respectively.

To add to the comments that show you how to configure something similar yourself, Firefox recently started including search shortcuts by default. This means you can now type `@google <query>` in a recent Firefox installation to search Google. More info here: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/17/searching...

It's still not as smooth and doesn't support as many OpenSearch providers as Chrome's, but might already help a bit.

Firefox has almost the exact same thing. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...

As someone who switched from Chrome to Firefox not that long ago this is the only feature I miss. Searching e.g. YouTube involves typing the query and then using the mouse to click the YouTube icon in the address bar dropdown. It's not nearly as effortless.

Set the default search engine to DuckDuckGo, and just type !yt query in the address bar. No mouse necessary.

Yeah this is the worst in firefox. I'm desperately trying to stick to firefox out of principle, but Chrome is just sooo much more comfy beacuse of like 3 features.

Firefox actually has 2 domain specific search-shortcut features, but both take time to set up and then is not intuitive at all. Chrome just blows it out of the water.

Also wtf - if I type "hello" and press enter in the search bar in FF, it puts a "www." in front and ".com" at the end.. like holy hell, if I knew the domain I'll write .com myself, it really is no problem. I even went ahead and googled for 15 minutes and disabled this in some deep settings somewhere, but it still does it when I press enter too fast... damnit, it frustrates me every single day.

I hope they see this and fix this very-frustratingly-obvious anti-UX behaviour..

Typing a word or words that don't look like a url or file has so far as I can recall always searched the default search engine for the word or query. This so far as I can recall has always been the case. Can you replicate this in a fresh profile to ensure this isn't just something you have set?

I run into the same thing somewhat frequently. it's the only real issue that I have with firefox. it's definitely not related to the profile, and it only seems to happen with fast enough input+enter.

it's really jarring to be sent to a random domain when looking up something in a hurry.