cheatsheet

◉ Search Features,

Google
◉ Essentials
◉ Preferences
◉ Features
◉ Operators [2]
◉ +, -, ~, .., *, OR, |
◉ unofficial
◉ tutorial
site:
inanchor:
link:
intitle:
inurl:
intext:
filetype:
ranges

allintitle:
allinurl:

cache:
define:
info:
movie:
phonebook:
stock:
related:

Google Groups
◉ unofficial
author:
group:
insubject:

AltaVista
◉syntax
inurl:
host: [machine.
xyz.com]
domain: [com]
image:
anchor:
link:
text:
title:
author:
object:

Bing
◉syntax

(more)

Most Firefox questions asked in newsgroups could have been answered by simply searching Firefox resources for previously answered questions, specifically mozilla.org, mozillazine.org and the newsgroup mozilla.support.firefox

Search Mozilla and other Firefox Searches

Google site search for http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/

Location: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/search.htm
Home page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm [View without Frames]

It is important to learn to use Google and Google Groups, and one should look at the advanced search features of search engines.

Looking up Error Messages (#errmsgs)

Looking up messages returned in a dialog box.

When looking up an error message, it is important to search on the wording exactly as you find it in the message and enclosed in double quotes so it is recognized as words in specific orger (as a phrase).

A Google search for "This object has been blocked." should take you to a mozillaZine knowledge base article at Object has been blocked - MozillaZine Knowledge Base" [-- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Object_has_been_blocked --] and other helpful pages.

Examples, searching for a specific error message

If you follow the suggestions on this page then you might do a web search from the locationa bar with:
g: firefox "This object has been blocked."

or for a groups search from the location bar limited to firefox groups, possibly
ggff: "This object has been blocked."

Note you might not have noticed, but I include colons in my keywords, and the last thing I want is an accidental search initiated from the location bar.

⇦

At the left is a Cheatsheet that can be bookmarked to locate itself in the sidebar. The parentips link at the top will display the titles (unless it is in the sidebar). The (more) link at the bottom will open the cheatsheet in a new tab (target="_blank" is actually a new window).

Keyword with load in sidebar using a keyword does not work as reported 2003-08-05 13:01 PDT by Mike Connor (Bug: 215175 – bookmark keyword cannot be used to open bookmark in sidebar), so this is how you then had to get search into sidebar in Fx2.
1) invoke "cheatsheet:" keyword shortcut that has [x] Load this bookmark in the sidebar
2) click on "cheatsheet" link at top of http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/cheatsheet.htm
3) hit BACK button to return where you were

In Fx3 Mozilla broke target="_search" so you will have to click on a cataloged entry such as "cheatsheet:" entry in a folder such as "K" in your Personal Toolbar.

Google Web Search (#websearch)

If you want to limit to mozilla.org and closely affiliated sites like the mozillaZine kb (knowledge base) you can use firefox "This object has been blocked." site:mozilla.org OR site:mozillazine.org

Keyword Shortcuts for websearch

xxx Keyword shortcuts are explained on another page, the following is one more suggested keyword shortcut to help you find Firefox documented materials with a web search.

keyword	name / location
g:	g: Google web search
g:	http://www.google.com/search?q=%S+++-hth+-vbulletin+-inurl%3Aforum +-training.available +-shop.now
gff:	gff: Search mozilla.org OR mozillazine.org
gff:	http://www.google.com/search?q=%S+firefox+site%3Amozilla.org +OR+site%3Akb.mozillazine.org +%28inurl%3Afirefox +OR+inurl%3Akb +OR+inurl%3Adoc +OR+inurl%3Awiki%29 +-inurl%3Asearch.php+-inurl%3Aqa
gg:	Google Groups search (see kws.htm)
ggff:	Google Group;s search of mozilla.support.firefox (see kws.htm for code)
bug:	Bring up a specific Mozilla Bug - not a search (see kws.htm
bugs:s	Search Mozilla Bugzilla (see kws.htm)
bugs:adv	Bugzilla Advanced search form (not a search, see kws.htm)
ext:s	ext:s Search for Firefox Extensions (also see kws.htm for addons, addons2, etc)
ext:s	http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Aaddons.mozilla.org +OR+inurl%3Aextensionroom.mozdev.org+firefox+%S
kb:	Search Microsoft knowledge base (see kws.htm)
kb_:	Search Mozilla knowledge base, can be aliased to a simple colon (":"), if it will be your most common search,(see kws.htm) Search for solutions to problems, The Mozilla kb is where to find solutions, and the articles there can solve most problems.
link:	Articles that link to this page using AltaVista search (see kws.htm) for this AltaVist is much better than Google
linked:	Articles that link to this page using Google search (see kws.htm)

hint: after invoking a bookmarklet from a keyword you no longer see the URL on the location bar, but the JavaScript. By reselecting the location bar (Ctrl+L), you can then use Ctrl+Z (Undo) which first gives you back what you entered (keyword and operands), the next Ctrl+Z gives you back the url. So you have the means of a modified reentry, similar to the ease of using the a search engine that leaves the last entry showing for modification and reentry.

The advantage of the search bar plug-in is that you can modify the search arguments easier because they remain on the search bar.

The advantage of the keyword shortcut is that it is faster to type out the keyword and search arguments than to use the search dropdown. But to reenter you have to start over or Ctrl+Z (Undo) at the location bar.

Google Search with a keyword shortcut

The Google Search ("g:") above contains some negative keywords to help eliminate some obvious content spammers from initial results, also suggest installing the "Customize Google" extension to enhance results and aggressively filter out unwanted content spammers and newsgroups/forums posing as web pages. You need to filter after Google Search because Google limits you to 32 words in a search.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm#customizegoogle
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/743/
Google Help : Search Features (various search engines/features)
Basics of Search
Advanced of Search (overview)
Advanced Google Search Operators (all operators)
Preferences, be sure to set results to 100 (max), and results on a new page. (New page should go to a New Tab with the proper Firefox settings).
Search Results Page

Search for Firefox Documentation:

In the gff: will search at mozilla.org and at mozillazine.org some directories or nodes will be required: firefox OR doc OR wiki and some directories are to be ignored: qa (quality assurance), search.php (searches). note: talk is developer discussions not of what is available, wikis may be for current or for future development, addons (extensions) have not been suppressed but suggest you use a separate search when looking for extensions.

Search for Firefox Extensions:

The ext:s shortcut will will search at addons.mozilla.org as a Google web search. It cannot limit items to Windows and it will not provide the descriptions as you can get from the Customixzed Search Engine.

Search Engine to search addons instead of using a keyword shortcut

Search for Firefox extensions: suggest you set up a Search Engine tailored to search for Firefox Extensions that will provide a near complete description of each found extension. For instance my choice is to find Firefox extensions that will run on Windows and return up to 50 at a time, sorted by name. This is not a Google search and can't find the rules but the name of the extension or a few words works best.

Navigating the Addons Search Results: Complaints of the listing being too verbose can be alleviated by installing the Document Map extension, then from the View menu, click on sidebar and then Document Map. The sidebar will list a line for each HTML Header.

Using the SpaceBar to navigate down is the same as using the PageDn key.

Advanced Search features for Google web search

You can find more the Google search tags among the following:

Search Bar (#searchbar)

Search Bar (Ctrl+K), Firefox's builtin Search Bar (onsite), by David McRitchie
Search Bar - MozillaZine Knowledge Base, Firefox's Search Bar is a convenient way to search using your favorite search engines. The default is Google. {Directions also available at Mozilla: Search bar}
Add to Search Bar [ref], Make any pages' search functionality available in the Search Bar, or as a keyword shortcut.
Mycroft search plugin project provides a collection of Sherlock & OpenSearch Search Engine Plugins (12718 at the last count) for your web browser.
Mycroft search plugin for MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Links specifically addressed to Google web searches
- CustomizeGoogle [ref], enhances Google search results by adding extra information
- McAfee® SiteAdvisor™ [ref], adds site warnings to Google search results
Search Plugins - Mozilla Community - a Wikia wiki

Google Groups Search (#groupssearch)

Keyword Shortcuts for groups search

keyword	name / location
ggff:	ggff: Google Groups search for Firefox groups
ggff:	http://groups.google.com/groups?as_ugroup=firefox&num=100&as_q=%S

The ggff: keyword shortcut is specifically for searching mozilla.support.firefox but is not limited at this time and will search any group containing firefox in it's name.

More information on Firefox Bookmark keyword shortcuts (onsite), or Using keywod Searches - MozillaZine Knowledge Base {Simplified directions also available at Mozilla: Smart keywords}

Advanced Search features for Goggle Groups

You can find more information on Google Groups search tags among the following:

Don't use default search from address bar (#nodefault)

about:config filter: keyword

default settings in Firefox

Preference Name	Status	Type	Value (Default)
keyword.URL	default	string	http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
keyword.enabled	default	boolean	true

If you don't like being whisked off to a Google search because of a malformed URL typed into the location bar and want to avoid some of the risks of those that prey on mistyped urls then you might consider the following changes to Firefox configuration variables.

Preference Name	Status	Type	Value (suggested)
keyword.URL	user set	string	http://127.0.0.1/search?xyz=%s
keyword.enabled	user set	boolean	false

Setting keyword.URL to False prevents an automatic Google (or alternative engine) search.
Also setting the keyword.URL to local computer further guarantees that search will not be effective from the location bar. (original setting of http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= can be restored with Reset)
The ie and oe stand for Input Encoding and Output Encoding

Brain on Fire » Blog Archive » Turn off domain guessing and keyword search in Firefox -- best article on the subject
TweakGuides.com - Firefox Tweak Guide, keyword enabled -- Bookmark Keywords will still function.
Invalid URL in Firefox: Microsoft feeling lucky » Digital Inspiration

about:config filter: fixup

Preference Name	Status	Type	Suggested Value	Default Value
browser.fixup.alternate.suffix	default	string	.com	.com
browser.fixup.alternate.prefix	user set	string	adblock..www	www
browser.fixup.alternate.enabled	user set	boolean	false	true
browser.fixup.hide_user_pass	default	boolean	true	true

Setting browser.fixup.alternate.enabled to false will prevent automatically generating www.IBM.com for an entry of IBM on the location bar; nevertheless, I prefer to also purposely change browser.fixup.alternate.prefix so that an invalid url would be generated and bring up an ADBLOCK message by blocking on "*adblock..www*".

Google Groups Search Orientation (#ggorientation)

Google Groups has changed a simple and effective results presentation into a very confused and complicated results presentation, confusing everyone, and is apparently designed for use only with a full width window and a minimum resolution of 1024 x 768. The gg:fix bookmarklet described later can remove the space hogging third column but does not work in Internet Explorer (IE6). [the real Google motto: 'If it ain't broke, break it.']

Here are some Google Groups threads you can play with, each Links to a New Page or New Tab (depending on your Firefox Tabs setup):
tree 5msgs GG Guide 22 msgs Thread with 34 messages Advanced Groups Search
The key to seeing threads is in {More Options | Hide Options} at the right on the Groups Title bar, and
{Show Message List | Hide Message List}, {Expand All | Collapse All}, {<: Older | Newer >:} below

You can drag the separation between the message list column (thread column) and message column (second column) to make the message list column smaller, or you can hide/unhide the message column as shown on the image above.

JavaScript must be turned on: If you are missing the very dark gray bar with Options then you need to turn on JavaScript (Tools, content)
It appears the group owner can change the appearance of pages, including the sidebar (doesn't specifically say right sidebar, see Google Groups Help Center - How do I customize my group's appearance?
Minor modifications: blue, green

Bookmarklets for fixing Google Groups search (#ggfix)

The following bookmarklet (gg:fix) will remove the third column of the Google Groups Search page. I normally invoke this one from the bookmarks toolbar. This version only works in Firefox and I don't know of comparable bookmarklets for other browsers.

gg:fix is a bookmarklet, drag it to your personal bookmarks bar or to a folder within, right click on bookmarklet to give it a Firefox keyword of "gg:fix", then you are set up to remove the space hogging 3rd column of a Google Groups search by invoking gg:fix

gg:fix Toggles third panel of Google Groups search OFF and ON as desired. [test]. Bookmarklet was posted by Ralph Fox 2007-02-02 and later revised for Fx2/Fx3 2008-09-08 again by Ralph Fox.
javascript:(function(){var%20zL=document.getElementsByTagName('*');var%20zI;var%20zZ=0;for(zI=0;zI=0||(zV&&zS.indexOf('width:%200.32pt;')>=0))){if(zV){if(!zZ)zZ=(zS.indexOf('width:%200.32pt;')>=0?+1:-1);zE.style.width=(zZ<0?'0.32pt':'32ex');}else{if(!zZ)zZ=(zE.style.display=='none'?+1:-1);zE.style.display=(zZ<0?'none':'');}}}})();
Bookmarklets (JavaScript Favelets) (onsite) has an orientation to using Bookmarklets to modify the appearance of a webpage. Most can be used in any browser, but as in gg:fix (above) some can only run in Firefox, and others can only run in Internet Explorer. There are very few that do not have an alternative form for other browsers.

Google Preferences not sticking (#preferences)

Despite setting Google preferences to 100 hits at several places (http://www.google.com/preferences) the number keeps getting reset to 10. McAfee SiteAdvisor extension will only report on the first 10 hits then when Customize Google extension extends results well beyond any limit. Even within "Customize Google" choose sticky options then choose the same language, filtering, number of hits as you wanted, keeps getting reset to 10.

Adblock blocks

*ad2.googlesyndication*
*/includes/google-adsense-content.html?client=*
*googleadservices*
http://*.googlesyndication.com/*
http://www.google-analytics.com/*
http://www.google.com/images/promo*

Google Crunches Its Cookies Faster | WebProNews, David A. Utter on Tue, 2007-07-17 [http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/07/17/google-crunches-its-cookies-faster]

About the time that article came out, somebody told me to delete all my cookies (always bad advice, unless they tell you to delete specific cookies).

Cure appears to to be turn off Adblock, change preferences, recheck preferences and test, then if okay, enable Adblock again, and SiteAdvisor even reports once more beyond the 100 hit limit in Google preferences. [2007-09-26 same day as started section]

Speaking of cookies: (2007-10-29) My own cookies are for session-only with the following exceptions to allow cookies: altavista.com, google.wikia.com, kb.mozillazine.org, support.mozilla.com exceptions to block cookies: www.pcmag.com [block]

browser. search. openintab Boolean
True: When performing a search from the Search Bar, open the results in a new tab.
False (default): Open search results in the current tab/window. Note: Firefox nightly trunk builds only.

Plus in Google you might want to set
max returns to 100
open in new window
(which of course you have FF options,
tabs, new windows should open in a new tab)
setting preferences requires cookies to be enabled for google.com
http://www.google.com/preferences

Note: Google uses Target="_new" not target="_blank" so you might want to use Ctrl+Shift+click or Ctrl+click so that you don't keep looking at each search item in the same new tab/window that Google started.

Customize Google
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/743
streaming option is nice
set your Google preferences here (as well)]
filter ads

McAfee Site Advisor (not for Firefox 3) http://www.siteadvisor.com/

Search Mozilla and other Firefox Searches http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/search.htm

keywords you might want to create and use -- g:, gg:, ggff:, ggfix:, ss:,

Google Search no longer best search engine (#crap)

Wonder why your searches at Google are not longer working here are two examples look at the cache view:

These search terms are highlighted: background image background repeat backgroundrepeat repeat

But this is what I searched for: background-image background-repeat: repeat stipple

Here's an even more ridiculous hit, who cares if a word is in a linked from article:

More extensions on my Firefox home page.

Category:Location Bar - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Category:Searches (Mozilla Suite) - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
CustomizeGoogle extension, enhances Google search results, removes ads, filters unwanted sites ( configurable). An additional feature is ability to use the "stream search results (Beta) option to continue reading additional pages as you scroll down through Google results pages. A similar feature to recombine other web pages separated by use of "Next", can be provided by installing the repagination extension to provide a continuous flow of pages.
Firefox Documentation Locators (onsite), provides assistance with locating Firefox Documentation
Everything Google Menu, list of Google services; and Google's Other Services and Tools (alphabetical)
Firefox Help - Online Help for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
Google Searches in Firefox (onsite), suggestions for using Google Web Search and Google Groups Search.
Google Custom Search Engine, has additional parameters documented for Site Search customers displaying search results on their own web sites.
Keyword Shortcuts (onsite), there is an emphasis on searching with shortcuts and with engines.
Search Bar (onsite), information on context menu.
Search Bar - MozillaZine Knowledge Base, Firefox's Search Bar is a convenient way to search using your favorite search engines. The default is Google.
Search Engines (onsite), creating a search engine
YouTube - Inside A Google Data Center [Ref, Matt Hartley]

This page was introduced on September 28, 2006. [My Excel Pages -- home] [INDEX to my site and the off-site pages I reference]
[Site Search -- Excel] [Go Back] [Return to TOP]

Please send your comments concerning this web page to: David McRitchie send email comments