For those of you who use Firefox

[#686578]

People keep asking me how to do this when they see me do it or talk about it and I'm tired. So I'm going to make this guide and not show anyone ever again.

The basic trick is, this is used for when you're tired of using long URLs to find a page while searching for something.
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/1.jpg
Now, that's not that long, but it's an example all the same. I know you could just as easily add whatever search engine you're using to the search bar next to the address bar, but this seems easier and most people like it. Instead of selecting from the drop down menu where you want to search you can just type in an alias and what you want to search.

Basically, we're turning something that looks like this:
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/2.jpg

Into something that looks like this:
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/3.jpg

It's really quite simple let's use BGwiki as an example.
Now, to set this up you're going to need to find the page the url the website typically uses to search. It's that really long string of text that we see in image 2. So, since we're using BGwiki type something like Hello World in the search box and then hit the go button.*
You should end up at a page that looks like this:
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/4.jpg
Bookmark this page, if you don't know how I'm not going to explain it. I suggest making a new folder for your search aliases, but it's not necessary.

Once you have your bookmark open the Bookmark Sidebar, CTRL+B. Right click on the bookmark you just created, right click and hit properties.
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/5.jpg

You should now be looking at this:
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/6.jpg
The two important things to look at here are keyword and location. Keyword should be whatever you want to type to use this particular search engine. I used bgwiki.
Location is particularly important, you'll notice this is the url of the page you just bookmarked. Click on that field and find the part of the url where it'll say what you searched for.
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/7.jpg

Replace whatever it is that you searched for with %s so it looks like this:
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...Tutorial/8.jpg

I'm sure you can use common sense to determine which part of this tutorial does what, but here it is anyways. The keyword is an alias, it's something the user types in that the program looks up to find if it means something different, the keyword will redirect Firefox to the location, the URL. The %s is a common modifier that many programs use to define the searched query; %s will automatically be replaced with whatever you type after the keyword. So, bgwiki will be replaced with http://wiki.bluegartr.com/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go and furthermore the %s will be replaced by, whatever you type after bgwiki; http://wiki.bluegartr.com/Special:Sea ... y&go=Go.**

That's pretty much all there is to it. Here's some additional links you can use, FFXI Item Search breaks tables so I put them in a spoiler.
[spoiler:3hrq25ln]Wikipedia***: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
FFXIAH Item Search: http://www.ffxiah.com/item_search.php?search_q=%s&description=&level%5B0%5D=&level%5B1%5D=&price% 5B0%5D=&price%5B1%5D=&stock%5B0%5D=&stock%5B1%5D=& storage-slots%5B0%5D=&storage-slots%5B1%5D=&damage%5B0%5D=&damage%5B1%5D=&delay% 5B0%5D=&delay%5B1%5D=&dps%5B0%5D=&dps%5B1%5D=&slot s_any=any&races_any=any&jobs_any=any&weapon_id=0&f ields%5B%5D=0&order%5B%5D=0&fields%5B%5D=0&order%5 B%5D=0
FFXIAH Player Search: http://www.ffxiah.com/player_search.php?sid=1&search_q=%s
Otherwiki: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Speci ... ch?search=%s&go=1[/spoiler:3hrq25ln]


*We want to type in something that wont actually get a result if you're using a wiki, we're looking for the search syntax that the website uses, so it's very important that it doesnt actually return anything. For websites like google type in whatever you want, as long as the site doesnt automatically redirect you to a page if there's a hit you're good.
**It actually turned "Adaman Hauby" to "Adaman%20Hauby" this is the internet code for space and will be done automatically. This shouldn't ever harm you, but if it does, look for if the search engine is using a + or a _ as a space and just remember to type it that way, I dont think I've ever actually come across this problem myself. Adaman+Hauby or Adaman_Hauby.
***You may have noticed I have a Wikipedia Go and a Wikipedia Search from my images, one of those is for when I'm searching and want to browse through several pages for a correct one. To do this hit SEARCH on a wiki instead of go, it'll change the URL to tell the server to not redirect you and give you a list of results like google. The one provided here is the go.

[killerx]

thanks

maybe this should be moved and sticked in tech support