Searching the Awesome Bar [Quick Tip]

[Firefox only]

Today's Quick Tip is more of a "did you know?" than an instruction per se, but it is about as useful as it gets!

Reading something online, then promptly failing to bookmark it, then instantly needing it again is a common online malady. Did you know you can use your address bar (which is the field at the top of your browser where you usually type in the URL for sites) as a search field for your browser's history? Did you know this allows you to refind what you have already found? Others call this searchable address bar in Firefox "the awesome bar", and this may be deserved... let me give some examples of how it works:

Let's say I recently was reading about copyright research online and wanted to revisit some of the sites I ran across. I can find what sites I read by typing "copyright" into the address bar. Notice that the bar searches as I type:



Note that the search only includes the page titles of the pages you have visited, and not their content.

You can also search using multiple words. This works in pretty much the same way as the single-term search, it just adds a level of refinement to the search. I can enter my search term, in this case "family tree", and scroll through the results to find what I was looking for:



This multiple word search omits other results, such as results that would appear if I only used the word "tree" as below:



Of course, you may find this feature annoying, useless, a compromising of your privacy, or all three. If so, you may just be interested in how to turn off the search feature for good!

Greasemonkey-What It Is, Why You Should Care

If you are using Firefox, you should have heard the term "Greasemonkey" being tossed around once or twice on your internet travels. If you haven't, no sweat. Let this post serve as your primer on Greasemonkey, and by the end you will be itching to get Firefox greased up and ready to speed down that infamous "information highway."

What it is

Put simply, Greasemonkey is an extension (also called an add-on) for Firefox that allows you to manipulate web pages to your liking. More than just a simple add-on that works on a single site or in certain ways, Greasemonkey gets under the hood of your total browsing experience, and allows you to create a more seamless, efficient web.

Sounds great, right? So let's get started!

Getting Greasemonkey

You begin by downloading the add-on here. Simply click the "Add to Firefox" Button and the following box will come up:



Click "Install Now" when the button de-greys, and the extension will install. You will have to restart Firefox for the extension to function correctly.

Give the Monkey Bananas

On its own, Greasemonkey doesn't do a whole lot, but sit idly in the background waiting for something exciting to happen. Much like a banana to a monkey, so is the User Script to Greasemonkey... it's what makes Greasemonkey come alive and start to show its charm.

User Scripts are simply small scripts, written by individuals, which use the power of Greasemonkey to accomplish certain things within your browser. Some user scripts are designed to work along with specific sites (like Google, Amazon, or even online gaming sites). Some make very minute changes to the layout or toolbar options for certain sites. But some user scripts stand out for the ways in which they re-configure the web to make it more efficient and user-friendly.

You can browse the gamut of these scripts at userscripts.org.

Some Very Useful Scripts

So what can greasemonkey and user scrips do for the genealogist?

LookItUp2- A great script that extends your ability to use the web in a more seamless way. LIU2 allows you to select text and search for a word or term in a variety of different websites without leaving the page you are on.

Let's say I am on the Allen County Government Website, and was wondering if this "Allen County" had any genealogy resources I should be aware of. With Greasemonkey and the LookItUp2 script installed in my browser, I can simply press Shift+Ctrl+Space and a screen appears over my current screen:



The top red arrow shows the search field, where I have entered my query, "Allen County Genealogy". Next to this field is the drop-down menu which allows me to select what site I would like to search (the list includes Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Google Images, Google, Websters, Answers.com and more).

The second red arrow shows the results I have gotten for my search in Google. Note that under this pane is the original Allen County Government page on which I started. I can browse as normal within this pane, then, when I am finished, simply click-off of the pane into my standard browser window, and the pane disappears!

Google Extras- Another powerful script that adjusts search results in Google to provide search over multiple different sites like Google Images, Wikipedia, Google Videos, and Dictionary.com.

Let's say I search on Google for "genealogy" with this script installed. This is what I see after performing my search:



This "megasearch" makes use of the traditional white-space in the right margin of Google results pages, and makes short work of finding what data is online related to your search terms.

Custom Sticker-Adds temporary markers to web pages to be used while working on that page. The markers disappear after a page refresh or upon returning to the page, but will remain if the page is re-navigated to by going backwards through your history.

An example of using the red markers on Ancestry:



The nice thing about these markers is that they remain when printing the page, providing an easy way to mark text or lines for printed web pages!

In Conclusion

These are just a few examples of the useful scripts you can find to make Greasemonkey a most useful browser extension. Greasemonkey and its attendant user scripts seems to me to be a glimpse of where the web is headed... a streamlined place where web sites interact across URL, less boxed in to their sites and more energized because of their fluidity and customizable use. As is apparent, the new web is one driven by you and your specific needs... no more waiting for a webmaster to add or removed certain tools, features or functions! The browser is back in the driver's seat.

A Word of Warning

You should make sure that you have installed (or updated to) the most current version of Greasemonkey, as vulnerabilities are always possible, and have emerged in the past. Of course, if you are using Firefox and not Internet Explorer, you probably know how to manage your online security already. But hey... never hurts to hear a helpful reminder.

Making the Most of Bookmarks in Firefox 3

I had considered writing a post on maximizing the new bookmark features in Firefox 3, but someone else already did a great job!

Especially helpful are the items on using tagging within your bookmarks, and "smart" bookmarks.

Firefox 3 and Your Online Research

If you're considering making the move to Firefox 3 (currently still in beta, but nearing full release), be aware that there are still lingering issues with Ancestry and the Enhanced Image Viewer. Currently, users are having difficulty with the plug-in, or, as in my case, are unable to install the plugin at all and are forced to use the Standard Viewer (which, in case you don't remember, really leaves alot to be desired).

Zotero is also not currently functioning in the 3.0b5 version, (though it did function in earlier versions). Zotero says it will be fully compatible with Firefox 3 when it is finally released.

Google Notebook remains buggy and unstable in 3.0b5, (and virtually unusable) though it looks to be an issue for Google to resolve.

I'll update as more issues come to light.

Bookmarking Tab Groups for Specific Projects

If you're like me, you spend alot of research time online bouncing around from site to site, meandering a little along the way, then returning time and time again to favorite (or important) websites.

Today I want to share with you a nifty feature available in most browsers, which you may or may not have noticed: bookmarking (or, in Internet Explorer, favoriting) groups of tabs. This is a great way to instantly launch a set of bookmarked websites that you may use whenever you are doing some online research. Here's how it works:

1. Open all the tabs you want to bookmark in a new browser window. In this instance, I'll be using Firefox. To start off, I open a group of the sites I use most often when doing online genealogy research, each with its own tab:



2. Bookmark (or Favorite) the tabs. In Firefox, the command to do this is "Bookmark All Tabs" found under the Bookmarks menu. In Internet Explorer, "Add Tab Group to Favorites" under the Favorites menu. In Safari, "Add Bookmark for These Tabs" under the Bookmarks menu.



3. Name the Tabs group. In this case, I'll call mine GenealogyResearch:



4. Test your new bookmarked tabs. Open a new browser window and test out your new tabs:



Voila! A quick and easy way to jumpstart your research by opening your most-used websites.

Happy researching!

Using Addons in Firefox to Expedite Online Searching

The WorldCAT blog featured an interesting video on making use of Firefox extensions to enhance online searching functions.

A particularly interesting nugget, for me, was the mention of the "Add to Search Bar" add-on available from--where else?--the Firefox Add-ons page.

The Add to Search Bar add-on allows you to add the search function of any page into the search bar within the Firefox browser, all with just a right-click:



I have played with this little add-on for the past week with mixed success. It was impossible to get my local library's search function to work properly, but I was able to add and use the search function from another local library just fine. I was also unable to get the search to function properly for the FHL catalog.

I played around with adding a search of ancestry.com using a keyword search, and had some limited success... Same with using the interment.net search... results were just a little too broad, and having to go back and delimit searches or refine them sort of lessens the usefulness of this add-on for such large sites with various datasets.

The add-on does work brilliantly for straightforward searches of limited datasets. Searching for a title in your local library without having to navigate to the library's catalog page is surely a top-notch application here. I'm sure there would be other applications for this add-on as well... is anyone else using this add-on in a particular way?