During yesterday’s commute—while listening to a podcast with Ben Goodger (lead engineer for Firefox)—I heard about his favorite “secret tip†for Firefox users. It was one I’d never noticed or used: smart keywords. I’ve now tried it out and believe it will save a few hundred mouse clicks per week, thus the mention here.
What problem does it solve? I hate having to go through a couple of clicks to do a search of our OPAC. I’d like to be able to go to the Firefox location bar and type in: opac unix and have a search run against our OPAC for all items with “unix†as a keyword.
How? First, get to page where you typically enter a search term. Instead of filling in the search box, right click within it. You’ll see an “Add a keyword for this search…†option. Click that option and give the search type a name (so you can find it later in your bookmark list) and a keyword…in this case I used “opac.â€
Now, to run a search on that page you need only type “opac unix†in the Firefox location area…a search executes. 
But there’s a problem in this particular case (our OPAC) when you try it a second time–Firefox saved all the URL information needed to run the search (including the session and process ID’s that appear in our OPAC’s URL). To fix that particular problem with a Voyager OPAC, just go to the Bookmarks, then Manage Your Bookmarks, then select the name you gave this particular “smart keyword†bookmark, right click the bookmark, select Properties, and then delete the &PID=234234234&SEQ=234234234 section of the Location: value. In other words, convert this:
http://infosparc.gmu.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=%s &SL=None&Search_Code=CMD&PID=2604& SEQ=20060426093856&CNT=15&HIST=1
to this:
http://infosparc.gmu.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=%s &SL=None&Search_Code=CMD&CNT=15&HIST=1
Now it works correctly. Think I might change the “trigger” from “opac” to just “o” in the next revision…
More info on “smart keywords†can be found around the net. John Bokma offers a nice explanation on his blog.