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I really like keyword searches in Firefox's navigation bar. They are like lower latency and faster DDG "bangs". What I found is that most of my searches are bet

I really like keyword searches in Firefox's navigation bar. They are like lower latency and faster DDG "bangs". What I found is that most of my searches are better served by direct searches on Wikipedia and Stack Overflow. For Linux and software trouble shooting, using Google is better, but at least there's less "privacy surface area" than doing everything through Google. There's also so much SEO-spam on Google/Bing that I find it easier to just do site:reddit.com or look up the top rated posts/comments on HN from Algolia. The latter works really well, so thank you all committed HN users! :)

muxator 6y ago
Sadly, keyword searches are being deprecated in Firefox Desktop, and are already not implemented in latest Firefox for android. There is a plan to extend custom search engines with that functionality, but it is not clear if it can be a full replacement. I tried to find a link to the discussion where Mozilla took this decision, but apparently the decision process at Mozilla is not very open, or it’s documentation is scattered among too many systems.
- mackrevinack 6y ago
  it's mind boggling how many features they keep removing. vivaldi has the same search feature but i liked how firefox let you add/edit directly from the bookmark and also how the same shortcuts would work on the mobile browser. the only thing stopping me from going back to vivaldi at this point if the containers feature
- jwatt 6y ago
  It looks like some relevant discussion is at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G65IlLQqooUnRFtrzi-FU79MbPpSG0MNJ6F8zXV4z8g/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G65IlLQqooUnRFtrzi-FU79M... From that it looks like bookmark keyword searches will be auto-migrated to a new user interface in about:preferences that will allow users to create their own "custom search engine", which seems to imply it will have all the features necessary to do what bookmark keyword searches can currently do. Without knowing anything about this change prior to reading your comment, on the surface this seems like a good thing to me since it sounds like it will be a lot more discoverable and usable to your average user than bookmark keyword searches currently are. Disclosure: I'm a Mozilla developer.
  - autocorr 6y ago
    Thanks for posting! I hope that the conversion from bookmark to custom search engines will work with Firefox Sync. That has been a killer feature for me of the bookmark keyword searches. I've probably had the same keyword searches in my bookmarks for more than ten years, and Sync reliably puts them on every FF instance. Like magic! :)

muxator 6y ago

Sadly, keyword searches are being deprecated in Firefox Desktop, and are already not implemented in latest Firefox for android. There is a plan to extend custom search engines with that functionality, but it is not clear if it can be a full replacement. I tried to find a link to the discussion where Mozilla took this decision, but apparently the decision process at Mozilla is not very open, or it’s documentation is scattered among too many systems.

mackrevinack 6y ago
it's mind boggling how many features they keep removing. vivaldi has the same search feature but i liked how firefox let you add/edit directly from the bookmark and also how the same shortcuts would work on the mobile browser. the only thing stopping me from going back to vivaldi at this point if the containers feature
jwatt 6y ago
It looks like some relevant discussion is at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G65IlLQqooUnRFtrzi-FU79MbPpSG0MNJ6F8zXV4z8g/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G65IlLQqooUnRFtrzi-FU79M... From that it looks like bookmark keyword searches will be auto-migrated to a new user interface in about:preferences that will allow users to create their own "custom search engine", which seems to imply it will have all the features necessary to do what bookmark keyword searches can currently do. Without knowing anything about this change prior to reading your comment, on the surface this seems like a good thing to me since it sounds like it will be a lot more discoverable and usable to your average user than bookmark keyword searches currently are. Disclosure: I'm a Mozilla developer.
- autocorr 6y ago
  Thanks for posting! I hope that the conversion from bookmark to custom search engines will work with Firefox Sync. That has been a killer feature for me of the bookmark keyword searches. I've probably had the same keyword searches in my bookmarks for more than ten years, and Sync reliably puts them on every FF instance. Like magic! :)