December 21, 2005
@ 01:00 AM
Comments [10]
Yahoo! Open Shortcuts Announced

I just found out about Yahoo! Open Shortcuts. This is SICK!!!. Yahoo! has done it again. The excerpt below is taken from the FAQ

  1. How do I use it?
  2. Do you have some shortcuts that are ready to use?
  3. How do I create my own?
  4. How do I manage my Open Shortcuts?
  5. Is there search meta word trigger?
  6. Can I name my shortcut the same name as a default shortcut?
  7. I've got feedback about Yahoo! Open Shortcuts. Who do I tell?

  1. How do I use it?

    Type an ! (exclamation point) followed by the name of the shortcut in the Yahoo! Search box.

    !shortcut_name

    Examples:

    !my to navigate to "http://my.yahoo.com"
    !wsf to search "weather san francisco" on Yahoo!

    For shortcuts that search favorite sites or start an Internet application, you can also type optional term(s) after the shortcut name.

    !shortcut_name term(s)

    Examples:

    !ebay lamps to search for "lamps" on Ebay
    !mail bill@yahoo.com to send email to "bill@yahoo.com"


  2. Do you have some shortcuts that are ready to use?

    These popular shortcuts are available for immediate use:


    Navigation
    !clist http://www.craigslist.org/
    !my http://my.yahoo.com/
    !mysp http://www.myspace.com/
     
    Search
    !amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?mode=blended&keyword=%s
    !audio http://audio.search.yahoo.com/search/audio?p=%s
    !ebay http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=%s
    !flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/%s/
    !image http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=%s
    !mw http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/ourresults?p=%s
    !news http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=%s
    !php http://www.php.net/%s
    !shop http://search.shopping.yahoo.com/search?cop=mss&p=%s
    !video http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=%s
    !wiki http://en.wikipedia.org?search=%s
     
    Application
    !note http://notepad.yahoo.com/?v=161&DESC=%s
    !mail http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?login=1&To=%s

  3. How do I create my personal shortcuts?

    To create a navigational shortcut, use the keyword: !set with your shortcut name and destination URL.

    !set shortcut_name URL

    Example:

    To create a shortcut named "ff" to go to Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football,
    Type: !set ff http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f2

    To create a common search shortcut, use the keyword: !set with your shortcut name and the query.

    !set shortcut_name query

    Example:

    To create a shortcut named "watx" to search Yahoo! for "weather austin texas",
    Type: !set watx weather austin texas


    To create a shortcut that searches a favorite site or starts an Internet application, use the keyword: !set with your shortcut name and the destination URL. Within the URL, substitute the query term(s) with the "%s" placeholder.

    !set shortcut_name URL_%s

    Example:

    To create a shortcut named "yf" to search stock quotes on Yahoo! Finance,
    Type: !set yf http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%s

This is extremely useful. I've been wanting a short cut for searching Wikipedia on popular search engines for quite a while. Just for this feature alone I can see my usage other search engines dropping. 


 

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Wednesday, 21 December 2005 01:31:20 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
This is cool... but Windows Desktop Search has had this on the desktop for a year. I use it religiously. Having it on the web is nice, but the text box is already sitting right there in the taskbar waiting to be used - it isn't another step away. This was a habit-changer for me.

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.DesktopSearchShortcuts
Mike Torres
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 02:01:01 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
This sort of reminds me of YubNub - http://yubnub.org/ ; basically the same concept
Ken Sanders
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:53:14 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Insert my standard Firefox bookmark keyword and quicksearch fanboy comment here (you should be able to find it in several YubNub-praising posts) - why depend on a third party when you can right-click any search form and select "Add a Keyword for this Search" and then search from the URL bar?
Phil Ringnalda
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 07:12:30 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I'm so addicted to SlickRun these days. Why limit shortcuts to web pages?
haacked@gmail.com (Haacked)
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 09:21:02 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Tweak UI has had this feature for *years* - look under "Internet Explorer" > "Search". I've had "dict" set up to query dict.org for at least two years.
Ian D
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 11:22:11 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I use QuickSearch, one of the IE5 Web Accessories. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/previous/webaccess/default.mspx

Most of the Web Accessories still work under IE6. View Partial Source is a particularly cool one - it displays the HTML of the current selection by serializing the DOM, so you get to see the source after any Javascript has manipulated it.
David Powell
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 14:33:21 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Because you can pass a parameter to a Firefox keyword search, this has been available there for a while. For example, if I enter

wp clementine

in the navigation toolbar, it goes right to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clementine.

I wrote this up at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5358.

Bob
Bob DuCharme
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 16:56:43 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Firefox has supported associating keywords to bookmarks for a while. But having them stored on the server is most useful to avoid the synchronization problem.

Also, regarding YubNub, I don't think that YubNub allowed for personalized keywords. From what I remember, they were all global. Is that still the case?
Julien Couvreur
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 18:54:30 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Amazon A9 toolbar has this, too. However, I agree it's a big deal that Y! bakes this directly into search engine. Why was this not on tech.memeorandum or techcrunch?
Joshua Allen
Wednesday, 21 December 2005 19:47:29 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
This is not interesting because it is new (it is not new).

This is interesting because Yahoo is doing it and implemented it in the search box, one of the most used form fields in all of computing.

It's also interesting that we are going back to CLIs.
pwb
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