Handy Firefox/Icewasel keyword searches for (packages|bugs|*).debian.org
Just wanted to drop a tip on you about the Firefox keyword search feature. I use it to quickly access packages.debian.org on package information or to retrieve the BTS page for a bug number. With it you can use “bts 123456″ instead of “http://bugs.debian.org/123456″. May not appear much shorter but I like it anyway. Here an example on how to add a search keyword for packages.debian.org:
- Locate a search form (like on packages.debian.org), set all the select options like you want (e.g. only package in “unstable” and from “main”) and then right-click on the actual text field where you enter the search query and select “add a keyword for this search”:

- Give the bookmark a name (does not matter) and the keyword (should be short):

- Now you can use that keyword in the location bar (where you normally type the URL you want to surf to) and add the word that you search for:

- You will be redirected to http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=contents&keywords=cream&mode=path&suite=stable&arch=any
So basically getting the package page for this “cream” package means pressing Ctrl-L to highlight the location bar and just enter “pdo cream” and pressing Enter.
For me that was the second most valuable tip when using Firefox. The best tip would probably be how to make that monster take less than 10 seconds to react to mouse clicks on the menus when you have 20 tabs open simultaneously and to consume less than ridiculous 500 MB RAM or freeze up every minute when you use flashy sites like youtube. I really wish 3.x will finally fix that.
P.S. I wonder why wordpress shrinks all my images. I hope you can still guess what I meant.
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Hi!
Other browsers also have this. try dbug:1234 or deb:konqueror in konqueror. (You might need to enable those specific “web shortcuts” first in the configuration, but it is only one click away)
/Sune
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Does something like this also exist for epiphany?
December 23rd, 2007 at 9:24 am
I do the same thing. I use:
* “bug” for “http://bugs.debian.org/%s”, which lets me do “bug 123456″, “bug packagename”, and “bug from:me@example.org”.
* “dl” for “http://lists.debian.org/debian-%s”, which lets me do “dl devel” or “dl devel-announce”.
* “dp” for “http://packages.debian.org/%s”, which lets me do “dp packagename”.
* “ds” for “http://snapshot.debian.net/package/%s”, which lets me do “ds packagename”.