In case people are not aware of this, prepending a * to your query will make Firefox search _only_ in your bookmarks:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.urlbar.match.url
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Basic-Browsing/Awesome-Bar-Se...
Same here. Sometimes you find something really useful but you forget to bookmark (or in my case: add to pinboard). Then a few days later I realize and after a couple of minutes googling to no effect I start typing the parts I remember and FF narrows down until I find it. It also let me search for stuff that google at least until recently would ignore.
Recently used the bookmark-keyword thingy, pretty good BUT I'm still used to remembering URLs :p
Heck, one of the reason I'm not migrating to Chrome is... Bookmark shortcut key [alt]+[b] combined with js bookmarklet
e.g: remove floating div, press [alt]+[b] -> [3] done
This is probably the absolute worst way to handle bookmarking but as long as sync ver 1.1 is still functional I will probably keep doing it, sadly. I've at least given up sorting with folders and labels and just rely on the search in Fx.
I have no idea what happened, it just forgot all my history. Everything else was still there, just the history.
For instance, maybe I'm looking for a PostgresSQL tutorial. I start typing "postgres" and one of the bookmarks I forgot about from several months back appears. This approach has ended up saving me a lot of time over the years. Another cool thing is when a bookmark pops up when I'm searching that brings back memories. If the site is still up, I get a free trip down memory lane :)
My collection is at least 9 years old now. I've been maintaining the same Firefox database over the years by migrating it manually from version to version. Now it's seamless thanks to Firefox Sync. I get my bookmarks on my PC, laptop, and my phone. I have an Xmarks account as a backup, and for cases when I prefer to use Chrome.