By default, Firefox comes with two entry boxes at the top - the main one is for entering urls and the little one to the right for entering search queries. I don't like this because I too often start typing in the wrong box and then have to reach for the mouse, click the other box and then type whatever it was in again. Plus it's a bit of an awkward interface to select the search engine from the dropdown, and it takes up space which might end up chopping the end of the url you want to see. So this tip involves removing that search entry box and using some shortcut tricks to go straight to your search from the url bar.

The way this works is to set up bookmarks for your favourite searches, and store them away in a special folder. They're not going to be called from the Bookmarks menu, but once we've set up shortcuts for them they'll be callable from the url bar.

As an example, to set up a shortcut for a normal google search, do the search as normal, and get a url which looks like this:Set up a normal bookmark for this, call it something meaningful and store it in a separate folder just for this kind of bookmark. Next, edit the bookmark so that whatever you searched for is replaced by "%s", like this:and enter something in the field "Keyword" - use something short and easy to remember. I use "goo".

Finally, test the new bookmark by going to the url bar (Ctrl-L), and entering the keyword and the query so:This is quite cool, but gets much better when you add other search options, for example for image search or special inux search - you don't have to do the normal search first before switching to image search for example. Now you can remove the search box if you want by going to View - Toolbars - Customize.

Here is a list of keywords which I use and find useful:
goo (google search) http://google.com/search?q=%s
goi (google image search) http://images.google.com/images?q=%s
gol (google linux search) http://google.com/linux?q=%s
dict (dictionary) http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s
leo (english-german translation) http://dict.leo.org/?lp=ende&search=%s
wiki (wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
chfgbp (currency conversion) http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic/?exch...BP&value=%s
you (youtube search) http://www.youtube.com/results?search=&search_query=%s
rpm (rpm search) http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3?stat=3&...1&search=%s

Feel free to share your useful keywords here!