cheatsheet

   paren tips

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.
 
keywordname / location
g:g: Google web search
http://www.google.com/search?q=%S+++-hth+-vbulletin+-inurl%3Aforum +-training.available +-shop.now
gff:gff: Search mozilla.org OR mozillazine.org
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:sSearch Mozilla Bugzilla (see kws.htm)
bugs:advBugzilla Advanced search form (not a search, see kws.htm)
ext:sext:s Search for Firefox Extensions (also see kws.htm for addons, addons2, etc)
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:

Google Groups Search (#groupssearch)

Keyword Shortcuts for groups search [*]

keywordname / location
ggff:ggff: Google Groups search for Firefox groups
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 NameStatusTypeValue (Default)
keyword.URLdefaultstringhttp://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
keyword.enableddefaultbooleantrue

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 NameStatusTypeValue (suggested)
keyword.URLuser setstringhttp://127.0.0.1/search?xyz=%s
keyword.enableduser setbooleanfalse
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

about:config     filter:  fixup

Preference NameStatusTypeSuggested Value Default Value
browser.fixup.alternate.suffixdefaultstring.com.com
browser.fixup.alternate.prefixuser setstringadblock..wwwwww
browser.fixup.alternate.enableduser setbooleanfalsetrue
browser.fixup.hide_user_passdefaultbooleantruetrue
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.']

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
 

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.


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