One of the most underappreciated features of Firefox’s URL bar and its bookmark system is its support for custom keyword searches. These let you create special bookmarks that type a keyword followed by other text, and have that text inserted into a URL identified uniquely by the keyword, then that URL gets loaded. This lets you type, for example, “quote aapl” to get a stock quote on Apple Inc.
You can check out the article I linked to previously (and here, as well, for good measure) for details on how to actually create and use keyword searches. I’m not going to go into details on that here. What I am going to do is share a few keyword searches I’ve configured that I find incredibly useful as a programmer and as a writer on MDN.
For web development
Here are the search keywords I use the most as a web developer.
| Keyword | Description | URL |
if |
Opens an API reference page on MDN given an interface name. | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/%s |
elem |
Opens an HTML element’s reference page on MDN. | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/%s |
css |
Opens a CSS reference page on MDN. | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/%s |
fx |
Opens the release notes for a given version of Firefox, given its version number. | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/%s |
mdn |
Searches MDN for the given term(s) using the default filters, which generally limit the search to include only pages most useful to Web developers. | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=%s |
mdnall |
Searches MDN for the given term(s) with no filters in place. | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=%s&none=none |
For documentation work
When I’m writing docs, I actually use the above keywords a lot, too. But I have a few more that I get a lot of use out of, too.
| Keyword | Description | URL |
bug |
Opens the specified bug in Mozilla’s Bugzilla instance, given a bug number. | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=%s |
bs |
Searches Bugzilla for the specified term(s). | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=%s |
dxr |
Searches the Mozilla source code on DXR for the given term(s). | https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=%s |
file |
Looks for files whose name contains the specified text in the Mozilla source tree on DXR. | https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=path%3A%s |
ident |
Looks for definitions of the specified identifier (such as a method or class name) in the Mozilla code on DXR. | https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=id%3A%s |
func |
Searches for the definition of function(s)/method(s) with the specified name, using DXR. | https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=function%3A%s |
t |
Opens the specified MDN KumaScript macro page, given the template/macro name. | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Template:%s |
wikimo |
Searches wiki.mozilla.org for the specified term(s). | https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?search=%s |
Obviously, DXR is a font of fantastic information, and I suggest click the “Operators” button at the right end of the search bar there to see a list of the available filters; building search keywords for many of these filters can make your life vastly easier, depending on your specific needs and work habits!