Chanpory Rith
Aug 14, 2006
In Safari, you can press Command+1 through Command+9 to quickly open bookmarks in the Bookmarks Bar. Command+1 opens the first bookmark, Command+2 opens the second, and so on. Very cool, but what if you don’t use Safari? For months, I’ve been looking for a way to access bookmarks with keyboard shortcuts in Firefox. Finally, it dawned on me: Quicksilver triggers!
With Quicksilver’s custom triggers feature, users of Firefox and other browsers can now access their favorite sites with keyboard shortcuts. Here’s how:
1. Download and install Quicksilver.
2. In Quicksilver’s Preferences window, press the “Triggers” icon in the main navigation bar at the top.
3. With “Custom Triggers” selected on the left, press the little plus symbol at the bottom of the window and choose “Hotkey”.
4. A window will appear with fields labeled “Select an item”, “Action”, and “Target”. These fields will be already filled with your last Quicksilver command. With the “Select an item” field selected, press period (.) to edit the field and type in the URL of a favorite website.
5. Once you type in a URL, the “Actions” field should automatically populate with an “Open URL” action. If not, press the tab key to select the “Actions” field and type “O” to select the “Open URL” action.
6. Press the Save button.
7. A new Quicksilver command will appear in the list. Select it and press the “Info” icon on the bottom-right of the window to slide out the info drawer.
8. In the “Settings” tab of the info drawer, select “Edit” next to the “Hot Key” field, and type a keyboard shortcut, such as “Command+1”
9. Press the “Scope” tab and choose “Enabled in Selected Applications” in the pulldown. Type in “Firefox” or the name of your preferred web browser.
9. Repeat steps 2—8 for your other favorite sites using Command+2 through Command-9 as your keyboard shortcuts.
22 Comments
oskar
3:14 pm
Really nice tip! This will come in handy in loads of different situations!
Tyler Hall
6:52 pm
Thank you so much! Why didn’t I think of this before? I’ve been trying to switch to Firefox for months but couldn’t get away from Safari for this reason alone. My Mac just got even better.
Joel
7:16 pm
This tutorial plus the delicious plugin means even more access to my favorite bookmarks. Thanks!
Switchblog » Blog Archive » Access bookmarks through Quicksilver triggers
7:35 pm
[…] […]
Chanpory
6:23 pm
I’m glad you guys are finding the shortcut useful. Quicksilver continues to amaze me, it’s power seems almost limitless. I’m still in disbelief that it’s a free program!
chalfont
7:27 pm
Firefox/Mozilla has long featured bookmark specific keyword shortcuts… I remember using this feature as far back as Netscape 6.0. In it’s current implementation it’s as simple as highlighting the bookmark in Firefox’s Bookmarks Manager and clicking on properties. There you will find a line for “keyword” where you can assign a word or letter to launch the desired bookmark from the address bar.
But what’s really cool is that Firefox has taken this a step further. If you have a site you search frequently (i.e. imdb.com) you can create a searchable keyword shortcut. All you have to do is right click in the search field and select “Add a Keyword for this search.” Now, after naming your bookmark and assigning your keyword shortcut, you can search imdb directly from any site. In my case I’d type in “imdb Citizen Kane” (without the quotes, and it takes me to the results of the search. I save hours every week using this technique.
Better yet, this can also be done directly from Quicksilver, using the Web Search module. Even if my browser is not open, I can type “imdb”, select “Search For” in the Action pane, and my search string in the Object pane. Quicksilver then launches Firefox and performs the search as if I had entered it directly into imdb’s search field.
Sorry if this was long-winded and slightly off-topic, but it really is one of the most useful timesavers.
Chanpory
8:49 pm
Chalfont,
Thanks for the additional tips! Don’t about the long comment, we love them!
The Firefox keyword functionality took me a few seconds to understand. I had no idea this feature (the ability to type in keywords in the address bar to launch websites) existed. The only downside is that it’s still not a keyboard shortcut that you can just press.
Your Quicksilver tip for searching websites is a great one. I’ve been using a similar trick to make search queries through Yubnub.com. Since Yubnub has built-in commands for IMDB, google, and hundreds of other search engines, it’s become my Swiss Army Knife for searching the web. With Quicksilver, it’s even more powerful!
Check out these two links:
http://coelomic.wordpress.com/2006/01/02/quicksilver-tips/ http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/websearchlist
Jack Mottram
8:47 am
Great tip. One thing, though - it doesn’t work with bookmarklets, which is a shame.
Anyone have any ideas on how to make Firefox trigger bookmarklets with a command key combination, as you can in Safari? (This is the bane of my life - pretty much the only time I use my trackpad is to click on bookmarklets…)
baldo
12:34 am
is there a way to use quicksilver to open an input url with firefox?
like:
activation shortcut —> i write: “gmail.com” —> press enter
Car Broker
3:07 pm
Thank you, chalfont. And to Jack Mottram: This keword functionality does work with bookmarklets. At least it does in Firefox version 2.
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Ben Darlow
7:15 am
Nice idea, but this means that bookmark management has to take place outside of the context of your browser. A far superior method would be something that hooked into your browser of choice’s own list of bookmarks and let you invoke one by a keystroke + typeahead find for whatever name you’ve assigned it in your bookmarks.
For instance, let’s say I want to launch Daring Fireball; I could invoke a keystroke then type ‘dar’ and it’d automatically find it. I press enter and it launches. No manually creating triggers in Quicksilver involved. Is there any way of doing this that I’ve not discovered?
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12:52 am
Its a pity we dont have a Quicksilver type app for Windows (sigh..). About the closest is Autohotkey but this takes a bit of work to setup.
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[…] key in conjunction with a number key. (This is also wildly useful, but I mimic this behavior with a Quicksilver trigger with my targets being […]
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