Firefox 3, the latest version of the popular open source web browser, has a great new feature that can speed up work for library patrons who do a lot of searching. In this quick video tutorial I give a brief overview on how to use smart keywords in the address bar to search the library from any page on the net.
Instructions
- Right-click on any search box.
- Choose “Add keyword for this search.”
- Give the keyword a title/name. (This will be the name that will be stored in your bookmarks.)
- Choose a short keyword to use the search. For example, I chose “lib” for the main library search and “cat” for catalog searches.
- Now just type your keyword and then your search phrase in the address bar, hit return and watch the magic happen. (example: lib “your search phrase”)
Google’s latest beta product, Chrome, was announced today as an open source product. As per my last post to this blog, I don’t like to use the phrase “Open Source” in this context since the product was designed and built completely by Google and then released to the public under an open source license. In my mind the software is not truly open source, but rather free software.
Of course, as any web developer would, I had to give it a spin as soon as I had a chance. I am impressed - the software has a nice touch of animations which makes for a smooth a clean UI. Something that I wouldn’t expect to be a major feature in a Google product. The most impressive feature is the merging of the search and URL bar together. I think this is something that should have been in browsers for a long time.
Now for the real test - memory footprint. On my windows XP work station, I started both browsers and compared the memory usage. Firefox was using almost twice: 44k vs. 28k for Chrome. Now this isn’t the most scientific test, especially since I have at least a dozen plugins installed in Firefox. But impressive still.
We will have to leave it up to daily use to see how well it actually performs and how many people will make the switch.
