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September 19, 2006

software

Safari searching in the address bar saves you time

Posted Sep. 19, ’06, 8:02 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

Address bar searchingYou know the feeling that you get when you’re so accustomed to using your computer one way and you try to use someone else’s computer, but they’re lacking that critical piece of software? That’s the feeling I get whenever I try to use a computer without a “search via the address bar” feature.

For those who haven’t been properly introduced to this function, it works as follows. Instead of going to search your favorite website (or using the Google search box), you can type a shortcut for the site and your query into Safari’s address bar. So, instead of typing “google.com” followed by my search for “kumquats,” I simply type “g kumquats” into the address bar and it automatically shows the results of the search.
But the genius of this is that it works with any site for which you can figure out the search pattern. I can use “imdb Sean Connery” to look up the filmography of my favorite actor, “am Veronica Mars” to look up the price of that boxset, or “w Napoleonic Wars” to do a little historical research.

The feature is one of the many you can find in SafariStand, but if you want the streamlined version, you can always opt for the stand-alone SafariSIA by Alloc Software, which brings just this functionality to Safari.

One last tip: I’d never really found a use for Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which will automatically take you to the first link turned up by your search, but with address bar searching I’ve set up shortcut “gl”. Now, if I can’t remember who makes SafariStand, I can just type “gl SafariStand” and, as Emeril would say, bam. No fuss, no muss.


4 Comments

Long Nguyen said:

i would just like to add that it can also be done in Firefox out of the box and it almost never require setting up any keyword.

Basically, typing anything in the address bar and hitting enter is the same as typing something in Google and clicking on "I'm Feeling Lucky", except that using the address bar is way quicker.

September 19, 2006 8:15 AM
mikelite said:

Another alternative is AcidSearch. I think, and everyone has their software preferences, it's so much easier. You can choose different search engines in the pull down menu. Customizing it with new ones is seriously easy too and you don't have to remember which letter corresponds to which site.

September 19, 2006 8:32 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

The benefit of searching in the address bar, for me, is that I don't have to take my hands off the keyboard. And since I can specify whatever shortcut I want for the search engine, I can make it easy for me to remember.

And while Firefox's implementation is quite cool, it doesn't allow me quite the reliability I'm looking for.

But, as Mike says, everybody has their preferences. I've found searching in the addressbar indispensable, to the point that I always stupidly try to do the same thing on my Windows machine. That's the mark of useful software, to my mind :).

September 19, 2006 8:38 AM
Reneé said:

Actually, this EXACT functionality has been in firefox for decades. It's via the bookmarks menu - for the url, you put in the url with %s indicating the search term, and then in the keyword space you put the letter "g". There, now you can use it on windows as well :-d.

September 20, 2006 7:47 PM

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