Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in Firefox using Keymarks

Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by haxiel on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @11:18PM (#29916814)

As I understand it, this makes use of the 'Smart keywords' feature that's native to Firefox[1]. Take a search URL, add a keyword to it, and you can then use it as 'keyword search_term'. I use this for a few of the sites that I frequent.

[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...

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Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by Springtime on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @11:39PM (#29916925)

What's a pity is some browsers don't promote their native features, which leads most to be unaware of them and then browser makers likely see metrics showing little use of them.

Opera (pre-Chromium) had this feature to begin with, then Firefox (using bookmarks to store the keywords instead). Vivaldi browser retains the Opera style custom search UI and whenever I find myself searching a site enough I just create a nickname for it (eg: to archive the URL directly to archive.org/is, search caniuse.com, among dozens of others).

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Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by brigandish on Thursday January 13, 2022 @12:25AM (#29917179)

> What's a pity is some browsers don't promote their native features, which leads most to be unaware of them

Too true. I've wondered for a while what the keyword field in a bookmark was for.

I also found out just the other day that I can add search engines to Firefox[1] if the site supports the OpenSearch API[2]. I didn't know they could be added this way, nor did I know about OpenSearch, if I hadn't have searched for an easier way to search a site I frequent then I would never have known.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...

[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/OpenSearch

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Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by lucideer on Thursday January 13, 2022 @10:02AM (#29921438)

Chrome also has this feature: I recently realised this as a Firefox user after being semi-forced to half-switch to Chrome for a good portion of my work.

It's incredibly well hidden though, and the UX is horrific, which I'm convinced must be deliberate.

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Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by Nition on Thursday January 13, 2022 @03:11AM (#29918060)

Yeah, I use this feature constantly. I have e.g. wp to search wikipedia, im to search imdb, di to search dictionary.com.

For anyone else on Firefox, there's no need to go through a search engine or install anything. Just follow the instructions in that link. It'll change your life.

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Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by grey_earthling on Thursday January 13, 2022 @08:55AM (#29920743)

I used to use smart keywords heavily. I outsourced the work of maintaining a useful keyword list to DuckDuckGo.

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Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by balls187 on Thursday January 13, 2022 @01:31AM (#29917487)

Yes. Just find any search box in firefox, right click on it and select "Add a keyword for this search."

This feature has been implemented since I started using firefox, circa 2004.

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Re:Show HN: Bang Bookmarks – replicate DuckDuckGo bangs in F... by jiehong on Thursday January 13, 2022 @05:02AM (#29918937)

This used to be present in Chrome too (a few years ago), but now the only way is to go in the settings and manually add a new search engine.

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