Firefox Day: Bookmark Keywords and Wedged Add-Ons

It was a Firefox day.

"Bookmark keywords" are convenient, little aliases that substitute their arguments for %s in the URL line. When I get tired of typing, I set them up. I typically use them for searches, and they come and go based on what I use frequently. They're more convenient for me than adding stuff to the search bar.

Yesterday, I cleaned up, and today I have two: Wikipedia, and a search for whether the public library has a book on the shelf that I want.

To set one up, I drill down to the page that I'm looking for, then do this:

• ^L^C -- to capture the URL
• Bookmarks->Organize bookmarks->New Bookmark->Location->^V -- to paste it into the right place.
• Edit the URL to replace the specific things I was looking for by the parameter %s
• Type in a Name and Keyword
• Use them. For Wikipedia, I use the URL, wp . For library searches, I type bpl .

I also spent a few minutes un-wedging some helpers that weren't updating properly. They wouldn't remove themselves or update, announcing that they'd appear or go away "the next time I restarted Firefox." Nope.

I solved this by going into safe mode, invoking firefox --safe-mode, and removing/updating them there. Why's this work? I dunno, but it does. I got back up, re-started firefox the normal way, and all was well again.