Cogent Metal

Most firefox users know about bookmark keywords - shortcuts you can assign to bookmarks so you can access them from the location bar.

For example, to add a keyword for www.slashdot.org, you’d add a bookmark with the following values:

Whenever you type /. into the location bar and hit enter, you’ll go to slashdot.org.

Old news, right? Well, I was very surprised to learn that quite a few firefox geeks don’t know about the versatility of firefox keywords - specifically, smart keywords.

The basic idea is that instead of adding a keyword for a simple URL, you add a keyword for a search box. You type the keyword followed by your search terms into the location bar, and Firefox re-writes the saved URL to perform the appropriate search on the appropriate site.

For example, say you wanted to add a smart keyword for Wikipedia. You’d right-click on the search box, and click “add a keyword for this search”.

You can make the keyword anything you like. I generally use short keywords - like w here - for sites I use a lot, as a time saver. You might also notice that I’m saving this bookmark in a folder called Searches - I find it helpful to keep all my smart-keyword bookmarks together, just for the sake of tidiness.

Now, to use your smart keyword, you simply type w foo in the location bar, where foo is your search term, and you’ll be handily redirected to Wikipedia’s article on foo.

Neat, huh?

You can add smart keywords for practically any site with a search function. I use one for Google Maps

The Wayback Machine:

And even Urban Dictionary:

If you’re browsing through some sophomoric blog comments and come across an unfamiliar term, it’s certainly a great deal quicker to type Ctrl-T Enter ud feltch Enter than it is to laboriously look up the term by hand.

But, perhaps the most interesting aspect of smart keywords is their versatility. For example, I got a little frustrated with my Wikipedia shortcut - if I misspelled the search term even slightly, I’d end up on a productivity-killing error page. For example, w the last of the mohecans would give me:

This is especially galling, seeing as a Google search for that exact term instantly recognizes what I’m looking for.

Now, this gave me a bit of an idea; why couldn’t I use Google’s search engine in a smart keyword for wikipedia?

It’s possible, but takes a little bit of tinkering. First, create a new smart keyword based around google’s search box, but give it a keyword you want to use for wikipedia.

Now, open up this new smart keyword bookmark’s properties (under Bookmarks > right click > properties). We need to edit the Location property. It should look something like http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s. There may be some other information in there - it’s not important, we’ll be replacing it in a second. The %s value is the part that is replaced by your search term when you use the smart keyword. All we need to do is add some information to tell Google we’re only interested in pages from Wikipedia, so we paste http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s%20site%3Aen.wikipedia.org&meta= into the Location box. Now, when we enter gwiki widget into Firefox’s location bar, we search google for widget site:en.wikipedia.org - every wikipedia page that contains the word widget.

We’re almost there. All we need to do now is tell Google that we don’t want to be shown a search results page, but instead we want to go directly to the first result. We do this by adding &btnI onto the end of our URL. This code tells Google we’re doing an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. So, the final URL for our smart bookmark looks like http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s%20site%3Aen.wikipedia.org&meta=&btnI.

Perfect!

I hope it’s clear just how powerful, versatile and efficient this technique is. I’m sure I haven’t even considered all the possibilities for this kind of user-friendly easy-to-use dynamic URL re-writing, but I do know that right now, it’s saving me huge amounts of time.

I was browsing Yahoo Answers, reflecting upon just how awesome my first post was (conclusion: very awesome), when I noticed something strange about the design of the page:

I’m sure Yahoo spent a lot of money on this design - balancing the levels of grays and greens, mapping the internal grid, making it all user friendly - but only one thing really strikes me about it:

If I wanted a long, skinny column of content I’d spraypaint it on to Nicole Richie. I use a widescreen for a reason, asshole, and it’s not so that you can hire someone to draw you shitty background patterns. This seems to be a big trend in big-budget web-design right now:

Reading text on a computer screen already sucks without these fucktards making me reach for the scrollbar every five words. How hard is it to have a webpage fill the entire screen? I spent all of three-and-a-half minutes on the layout of cogentmetal, and even this shitty design can stretch to fit any weird aspect ratio you like.

I can just imagine pony-tailed asshole web designers patting themselves on the back after pumping out another run-of-the-mill fixed-width design, jerking off to the “consistent presentation across multiple platforms” and “unity of brand impact” - here’s a tip jackasses, if someone is using a horizontal resolution of 2048 pixels, it’s not so you can fill 800 of them with content and the rest with your insipid background non-image.

Hell, you could fit two more websites in there:

Perhaps that’s the secret here: miniscule amounts of interesting content means modern sites have to cram it all together into hundreds of pages of thin columns of content, fooling you into thinking they’re worth your time. Or perhaps the margins are just left bare to store vast quantities of FAIL. Either way, unless you like staying in to a void of web-design-jism, print out this post and glue it to the front of your monitor. It will stretch to fit.

Yahoo maintains “a community-driven knowledge market website” called Yahoo! Answers. It’s an innovative service that allows internet users to utilise the wisdom of crowds by asking a “question” in a diverse range of subject-separated forums, to which knowledgable experts on the topic can reply. It sounds awesome, and it was back in 1979 when Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis invented it and called it “Usenet”.

There’s nothing jaw-droppingly terrible about the idea behind Answers - aside from it being a typical case of a large tech company taking a proven internet service and repackaging it for brainless morons.

What really makes Answers stand out is the intellectual callibre of the people involved - and I use the world “involved” loosely, in the same way that a hapless drunk is “involved” with a curdling pool of vomit.

Something about Answers draws out the real cretins of the internet - imagine youtube comments with an extra-large seasoning of FAIL.

Take a typical question:

Well, bravo Cynthia - there are few places on the internet where you could find enough braindead douchetards to be “unanimous” with you, but Yahoo Answers is certainly one of them. I hope someone posts a way of preventing people from finding out who you really are. Myspace is certainly out, what with their bullet proof mechanisms for preventing people signing up for accounts with fake names. With a writing style as precise and enlightening as yours, I can see why you have a burning need to share your work with others, but as for “any site that has a search engine for anything like that“, I’m stumped. Let’s hope some generous academic with experience in the field can give you some guidance.

This isn’t some random pigshit that I’ve picked out of a field of diamonds - in fact, in the stockpile of Answers IQs, Cynthia isn’t doing too badly:

Well Vanna, I’m having a little trouble reading your question - maybe you should have used a few more Sp3C!aL K4rack7ers? I hope some of the knowledgeable Answers posters will be able to see past your confusingly formal style of writing and get to the root of your question - I’m sure they’ll be able to give you a useful answer, seeing as you haven’t cluttered up your question with any information on the software you’re using, version numbers, screenshots or a meaningful description of the problem. Some of the people asking questions here have as many as seven or eight lines of text giving details and explanation: BORING! No-one’s going to read all that.

Thanks for the clarification, retardedname2003, for a minute there I thought you were asking for advice on your crippling impotence. Your cryptic style is sure to have your question resolved promptly, people love a good mystery.

Fail.

On the rare occasion that someone posts a coherent question, the collective stupidity of Answers rushes in to bring the thread’s intelligence back down to the mean level.

This question, while guilty of the “spend five minutes fucking searching on google you lazy jackass” factor so typical of Answers, at least asks a reasonable question in a coherent way.

…and this is the calibre of response. As helpful as “OMG JOO CAN GET WAREZ FROM THE INTERNEZ” is, it’s not necesserily the most helpful reply to someone who has specifically asked for the price of the software.

The sole motivation behind 99% of answers is the accumulation of points - if your answer is selected as the “best” to a question, you get a larger number of points. While you’d be forgiven for thinking this would spur people to providing the best answers possible, in fact it just encourages even the most ignorant jackasses imaginable to weigh in with their two cents.

Points are redeemable for:

1) All-consuming loneliness
2) Asking more retarded questions

and so, the great cycle of Yahoo! Answers continues, like a protracted circle-jerk of quadruple amputees.