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Launching Favorites from the Address Bar with Keyword Names

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Here is a tip to make your IE favorites more powerful.
You can make the name of favorites keywords that if typed in the address bar will launch the favorite.
For example, say you like to go to your favorite web email site a lot, but you don’t want to make it your home page.
Simply add a favorite that takes you to the web email site in the main favorites folder (this won’t work if you put it in a subfolder). Then rename the favorite to something easy to type. For example, I go to https://www.hotmail.com for my web email, so I renamed mine to “mail”.
Now when I type “mail” in the address bar of IE it goes to https://www.hotmail.com.

Scott

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    isn't that what those convenient "Links" buttons are for? ;)

    one click vs. one click (set focus in Address field) + 5 keystrokes (mail + <enter>)

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Any plans to extend this functionality in the manner of Mozilla's <a href="http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/bookmarks/">bookmark keywords</a>? For those who haven't used it: Mozilla lets you assign a keyword (rather than having to rename it) to any bookmark, including those in subfolders, and it will be accessible by typing its name in the location bar (address bar).

    If the URL of the bookmark has the string '%s' in it you can type the keyword followed by a space and some other terms and those terms will be substituted for the '%s' in the URL. So if you have a bookmark with the keyword 'g' and the URL 'http://google.com/search?q=%s', then a Google search is as easy as "g my search"

    You can get some really powerful features out of this and javascript bookmarklets.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Hmm, how long has this feature been a part of IE? If it's been there all along, perhaps it's not being publicized enough.

    As Rory mentioned, it would be nice if this feature were extended to match (or even exceed) the functionality available in Mozilla/Firefox. I couldn't live without Firefox's Smart Keywords :D

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    this blog posting signals a bad sign for future developments.

    please don't even blog if its going to be useless stuff like this.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003

    Guys - before you go off on another blog comment rampage about features, and timing and platforms - ENOUGH ALREADY - I THINK THEY GOT THE MESSAGE!!!!

    Now can we just get on with reading the blog please? If you don't think the ieblog is aimed at your alleged level then don't read it - simple.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    This is the sort of thing that you see all over Windows and IE. TweakUI reveals most of the functionality that has otherwise been hidden (such as customising search prefixes for the address bar a-la Opera) but even that doesn't reveal everything.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    And you are a developer? Jeesh, i thought they were busy with FINALLY making IE a better browser.

    If that are the things that we can except here, then i'll be very disappointed.

    I (and I think a lot of web developers with me) want DATES and TIMES when there will be an Internet Explorer who can handdle simple things like the web standards, HTML 4.01, CSS 2.1

    But when I see such posts here, I'll die a little bit...

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003

    Alex,

    XHTML actually serves a purpose. It ensures that the pages are well-formed so it makes it easier to parse the page, otherwise you end up with dodgy HTML all over the internet that gets parsed in different ways by different parsers.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I thought there might have been some rational, valid points, but, ironically (but perhaps not surprisingly), it seems that Alex's post devolved into a self-righteous, name-calling frenzy by the end.

    Why the flame bait? Let the religion go. And grow up a little.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Jason,

    Learn a lesson from other threads here and in Alex's case, let sleeping dogs lie. Note how he counters many of Dan's valid points with name calling and ranting, thats all you'll get.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    be nice if there was a developer's edition of windows 6, one that includes lots of tools for customising, including IE - making it customisable to look at header, change user agents etc. (I know mozilla has it, I mean in the broader sense - windows for 'power users' or people who know what a registry key is).

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    also, IE in longhorn/ie 7 - will it launch with msn.com as the homepage still? Let's hope not, this is the type of thing that I think annoys people most about Microsoft: i.e forcing things onto people. Unless it's google of course

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Well, I for one thought it was a perfectly good tip. Keep up the good work guys!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Whatever happened to the other useful stuff like kb:##### that would take you straight to a KnowledgeBase article?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Is anyone else irritated by the American spelling of "favourite"? It's not localized to the right spelling on my machine even though my Regional Options are set to "English (Canada)".

    Of course, Microsoft isn't the only offender. The W3C insists on misspelling "colour". It still trips me out in my coding sometimes. Ugh.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I tried to stay away from posting anything on this blog, but..!!

    - Why rename??
    - Why fav in folder won't work?
    - When can I have more than one fav with same title in SAME folder?? IE uses title as filename. What a wonderful idea :)
    - When will I have to copy just single file to backup my folders??

    Oh well, but this blog is not to answer our questions and give timeline!!

    There are already hundreds of web site for IE tips for the IE which was "invented" 5/6 years ago. I don't see any point in posting tips for 5 year old browser. Post something that is new.

    I would refrain from giving any suggestions on this blog and waste my time. Show me that MS can innovate and then ask for feedback!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    'Favorite' Tip from IE Blog

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/thomasswilliams/archive/2004/07/28/20560.aspx

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I'm sure this is a very stupid question for all you pros, but I would just be glad if I had an address bar. New computer, new user - and if I ever had an address bar, it's gone now. What do I do to get it back? Help

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Ty si ale pekny blbecek, Alex.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    "Now when I type “mail” in the address bar of IE it goes to http://www.hotmail.com"

    Why bother? You could just type "hotmail" in your address bar and then hit ctrl + enter. This will auto complete your entry w/ "http://" and ".com".

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The truth is that Microsoft has a habit of producing bad software - probably due to being closed sourced and the limited minds can't produce anything else. It "looks" pretty on the outside, but, that's as far as the beauty goes.
    Linux is a wonderful product, which is winning the OS war, by the way, despite what you want to believe, because practically the entire world is working on it in some way - it's open source. The source code for Microsoft products is kept secret and hidden, thus, severly limiting the amount of people who can work on it and, therefore, limiting its quality.

    My suggestions is thus. Open ALL the source code for Microsoft products, thereby allowing more folks to improve it. Or keep it closed and continue to wane until such time as Microsoft products are no longer wanted by the public at all.

    Microsoft Corp. is going to lose the revenue generated by it's Microsoft Windows OS's. Either by opening the source code to the public, or by the public demand for the products dying out. Revenue generated by MS Windows OS's is going to be lost, one way or another.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Wow, Alex gets lots of bonus points for pointless ad hominem attacks and blindness to reality. Gotta love the way he uses the word 'slashdot' as an insult all the time too. Keep it up mate, professionalism is overrated anyway!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2008
    Hey everyone, Christopher here. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything here (over a year in fact).

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  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2008
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  • Anonymous
    October 19, 2008
    Ранее мы уже обсуждали некоторые из технических усовершенствований (выделение имени домена, многострочная

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    March 19, 2009
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