Even better you can create bookmarks and assign a keyword shortcuts to each bookmark.

Firefox will even help you create a keyword shortcut.

1. Right-click in the search box on a web page
2. Choose "Add a keyword for this search"
3. Tell it what folder to put your bookmark in.

Suppose you used the search box on this page and assigned it a keyword of "supp:"

Your bookmark might look like this:

Name: supp:q Search support questions

Folder: K (as in keywords)

Location: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/search?q=%s

Keyword: supp:q

To use it the %s gets substituted by your arguments supp:q add-on create search buttons

see: Firefox Keyword Shortcuts

http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/firefox/kws.htm

and help with searches, particularly Google searches see

http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/firefox/search.htm

If I were going to search add-ons this is what my bookmark would actually look like with a keyword of "addons:"

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site%3Aaddons.mozilla.org+inurl%3Aen-US%2Ffirefox%2Faddon+-inurl:collection+-cat=personas+%S

it is saying 100 hits per page, site:addons.mozilla.org and the url will not contain collection nor will the category personas be included. The substitution will be as entered it will not be htmlified.

Thanks. It was a bit hard to follow, but I worked it out in the end.

If anyone else has this problem, get the "Add to Search Bar" add-on, then click on "Add a keyword for this search" in the context menu, and add the shortcut you want (follow it by a colon, for convenience). Then, type this in the address bar (complete with colon), PUT IN A SPACE, then type what you want to search.

That's a bit different, and a good start, maybe this will provide additional insight to what I was suggesting.

I have over 80 search engines (most created by "Add to Search Bar") and the only way to see the keyword within is to click on the search engine drop-down and then on "Manage Engines" at the very bottom (I don't even bother adding keywords to my search engines). I have at least 139 specialized keyword search bookmarks based on having both "%s" and "Search" in their bookmarks. There are a lot of advantages to them being bookmarks, I can install my subset of bookmarks in any of my Firefox test profiles independent of having any extensions or anything else to install with a single copy and paste.

What I was suggesting was a close substitute for a keyword shortcut that did not create more clutter. I put them all (most of my public ones) in one bookmark folder for keywords so they are sorted on the keyword (by name in the title) so I can find them easily if I forget one -- also easily found using the AwesomeBar features (internal string search of bookmarks("*")) in the Location bar, bookmarks sidebar, library list. See Library picture.

Your main context menu (when focused within a form) now has both "Add a keyword for this search..." which is built-in, and the "Add to search bar" from the add-on. I would use the "Menu Editor " (91 KB) extension to keep them together at the top of the Main Context menu. See Menu Editor picture. For descriptions of Context menus see my page, Right-Click Menus and Toolbars in Firefox , though the pictures are old the content should be interesting.