POLL - Quicksearch vs search plugin

[moonbat]

Quicksearches are a little more obscure for novice compared to search plugins, but convenient on their own since you can immediately find something with a keyword.
I use w for Wikipedia, imdb for well, IMdB and yt for Youtube.

Do you prefer one over the other, or use both for the same site as well? For example, I have ddg for DuckDuckGo in addition to a POST version of the search plugin.

[therube]

I search from the location bar, though I do not use smart keywords.

(Typically only use google search. They learn me, so I can search imdb from google just as easily as - well, I've never searched imdb directly. IOW, depending on what I search, imdb will be the top hit anyhow.)

[coffeebreak]

I search from the location bar, though I do not use smart keywords.

Sounds like you do this: Location Bar search

Quicksearches

I've always called them "keyword searches".
Use them almost exclusively. They're extraordinarily useful.

There's alot more information on them than current SUMO provides (in days of yore they linked back to MZ-kb).
For whoever who wants to learn more:

• Using keyword searches
  (This article also has some good external references.)
• List of keyword searches
• Multiple parameter keyword searches

If anyone cares to try this out, here's a keyword search for Mozillazine Knowledge Base (using its built-in search function, not Google CSE). Make a bookmark with this as the url and assign it a keyword:

Code: Select all

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Special:Search?ns0=1&search=%s

The same can be done with their Google CSE (while it still exists, though I imagine it will go away once they've finished "archiving" everything):

Code: Select all

https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=003258325049489668794%3Aru2dpahviq8&q=%s

[SpockFan02]

I have custom keywords for a couple things but use the DuckDuckGo search plugin and DuckDuckGo !bangs for most searches.

[athenian200]

I do Location Bar searches as well. I prefer having a longer Location Bar that can show more of the URL to having a search bar, and even without that, I'd probably just bookmark Bing anyway.

[Coastie]

I use neither of these options. I have used DuckDuckgo for years from my DuckDuckGo icon on the bookmarks bar regardless of the browser. I have starting using the navigation tool bar since it has DuckDuckGo as my first option and YouTube as my second option. Removing it from the navigation tool bar wouldn't matter to me. Especially if if saves the developer(s) some work.

[back2themoon]

I use another method which seems to have been forgotten. Not Smart Keywords (or "quicksearches"), but the search engine keywords. It's somewhat a combination of your two listed options and has always worked best for me. Search is performed the same way as with Smart Keywords. Keywords are entered by selecting "Manage Search Engines..." in the Search Bar.

If you have many search plugins installed, the excellent Organize Search Engines extension can keep everything neatly organized in the search bar.

[doofy]

I don't have a search bar.
I keep trying to remind myself that my location bar prefs are set to history and BM's.
But I only keep 50mb of history, and my BM's are anally well ordered so it don't really worry me.

If I wanna search, I go to my pinned Startpage tab.

[Goodydino]

I created a new toolbar to hold all the buttons from extensions, and put the searchbar at the end of it. I use the searchbar for doing the searches.

[Toa-Nuva]

None of the poll options really match my use case... I'm using both, but not for the same sites. I use the search bar exclusively for Google, and I use keywords exclusively for ... just about everything else. Wikipedia (in multiple languages), several wikis, online shops, dictionaries, and so on... I've setup a few dozen keywords overall.

I don't really prefer one over the other, because most of the time I'm using Google, so using the search bar for that is more efficient because I don't have to type the keyword every time. For everything else, typing a keyword is more efficient than having to select a search plugin from the dropdown list manually.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

This poll is meaningless. So don't worry.

[John connor]

I use the quick search bar on the right with now Swisscows. I also have a lot of search engines in there so it's nice to have the drop down.