The time is coming when the only program you’ll use on your computer is your web browser, and all applications will be replaced by web pages. Here is a tip for getting to those pages faster and more efficiently.
Firefox has a feature built into each bookmark called a “keyword”. Think of this like a keyboard-shortcut for the web address. So instead of going to the address bar and typing: “http://www.google.com” and hitting enter, you go to the address bar and just type “g” and hit enter.
Here are my most-used keywords:
- g – google.com
- f – facebook.com
- gm – gmail.com
- v – vista.bu.edu (school)
- e – elance.com
The nice thing is that you can create and change these to whatever you want, whenever you want. Here’s how you create a keyword for a bookmark:
- Right click on a bookmark anywhere in Firefox
- Select Properties at the bottom
- In the “Keywords” box, type the letters you’d like to use for the shortcut (like “f” or “gm”, without the quotes)
- Now go to the address bar (Alt-D on PC, Command-L on Mac), type your new keyword, and press enter.
This is a commonly overlooked feature of Firefox that has been around forever, but it makes browsing so much faster.