Comments on: Firefox shortcut – the best thing since bookmark

By: Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:40:35 +0000

This is GREAT. I’ve been trying to figure this out for a while, and all along I thought it was something to do with the character encoding in FF. %S works beautifully!

By: WordWeb - a dictionary to use offline « Free Biz Ware

WordWeb - a dictionary to use offline « Free Biz Ware — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:05:45 +0000

[...] dictionary now. On Firefox, I just use the Dictionary Search (at the top right corner) or use the shortcut to look up unknown [...]

By: chris

chris — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:38:12 +0000

It’s been another six months, and I guess everyone has already found this, but anyway: Using “%S” instead of “%s” will disable the url encoding.

By: rw

rw — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:56:42 +0000

A year later, help from another Robin: you can use %S to force Firefox not to URL-encode the input (works in 3.0.8).

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

By: Bernhard H.

Bernhard H. — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:13:42 +0000

Since this is one of the first entries in Google I found I will post a solution to Robin’s problem (years later): Just use a capital S
%s will be replaced with the urlencoded sting while %S will have no urlencodin. hth
(Only testet in Firefox 3)

By: Rannilas

Rannilas — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:39:52 +0000

I’m having a similar issue with ” being encoded as % 22. A search for firefox and ending url encoding pointed me to the browser’s setting of View -> Character Encoding. I’m going to find more info on how to use this and see if 1.5 years later this helps you Robin :)

By: ander

ander — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:59:02 +0000

Yes, this is a great feature. To help me remember what bookmarks I’ve given keywords, I add the keyword to each bookmark’s title—e.g.:

Download.com (dl)

By: Robin

Robin — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 14:48:29 +0000

When I make the same bookmark in my Firefox 1.5.0.7 Windows with the same shortcut, typing the same
php manual/en/index.php
on the location bar results in
http://cn.php.net/manual% 2 Fen% 2 Flanguage.references.php
(without the spaces between the %, the 2, and the F), which results in error 404 page not found.

Since it works for you but not for me, it may be a configuration option. However, I can’t find any documentation or any property sheets to let me change it.

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 04:35:19 +0000

Ok think I get what you mean.
For the subsititution you want to use a path like “major-category/minor-category/item” to replace %s right?

So take a simple example, this url
http://php.net/manual/en/index.php

My bookmark:
http://cn.php.net/%s

Shortcut:
php

On the URL bar I type
php manual/en/index.php

Right?

This work ok for my Firefox 1.5.0.7 Windows.

By: Robin

Robin — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:58:46 +0000

This website’s software hit me again. It URL-decoded the URL encodings I put in my previous message, resulting in a comment that makes no sense. Sorry this is so difficult, but second-guessing this website’s software is maddening.

When I listed the long path a second time, saying it resolves to an error 404, what I originally typed had % – 2 – F instead of forward slash for the final two forward slashes. I didn’t have the space, dash, space between the %, the 2, and the F, and freebizware.com URL-decoded it into real forward slashes.

So, trying once again, to phrase my question such that it makes sense…

If my keyword is “goober”, and I type in “goober major-category/minor-category/item”, Firefox URL-encodes the argument before doing the %s substitution, resulting in “biglongname.com/blahdeblah.cgi/gratuitouslylonggarbage/major-category % – 2 – F minor-category % – 2 – F item” (without the spaces and hyphens). Well, URL-encoded slashes do not get URL-decoded when they are part of the URL path, only when they are part of the query string, so the server at biglongname.com returns error 404, page not found.

That is why I want to find some way to tell Firefox to quit URL-encoding the argument on that particular quicksearch.

Like, if instead of %s, it had a %S, or something, or maybe a keyword in the netscape bookmark mark-up that the quick-searches translate to, telling it whether or not to URL-encode the argument.

There, let’s see if freebizware.com prints this comment as intended.

Thanks for your patience.