Anyone who has seen me work or watched my blog for a while knows I'm all about productivity. I love finding new utilities that help me do my job faster. One thing that does that is Firefox's bookmark keywords. Let me explain how Firefox bookmarks work...
There are four properties for each bookmark: name, location, keyword, and description. The name and location are obvious -- the name in the favorite/bookmark list and the URL it links to. The keyword is simply a shortcut that you can type in your address bar. IE allows you to type the name, which is the spirit of the idea, but still not quite. The nice thing about a separate keyword is that it allows you to type m instead of microsoft or microsoft.com. For sites you visit often, this is invaluable. To go one step beyond the keyword support, Firefox also allows the user to specify a parameter in the location. So, for instance, I can create a bookmark called Windows Live with a location of http://live.com?q=%s and a keyword of live. This bookmark allows me to type in live michael flanakin and do a search for michael flanakin. This feature is absolutely awesome. It saves SOOO much time it's not even funny.
Now, I know some people will say to either click the favorite in the menu, add a favorite to the toolbar, or even utilize the IE7 search provider; but the problem with all of these answers is that I have to take my hands off the keybord, which is wasted time. For those of you who are more mouse-oriented, you just won't understand the benefits of keyboard access and how fast it can make you.
Just to give a few examples about how I use it, let me list off the sites that I have setup this way: IMDB, TV.com, .NET class library, and Wikipedia. If you've seen my website, you know I'm big into movies and TV shows, which explains the first two. I hate going to their sites, clicking the search box, and typing what I want. I'd much rather skip all those steps and type everything in a split second. Next, as a developer, being able to specify .NET classes and/or namespaces can bring up the help for them instantaneously. For those interested, here's my location: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/%s.aspx. This resolves to the real URL, whether its a class or namespace. Finally, I'm sure you all know that Wikipedia can be a great resource for just about anything. I would link to Live, but I use the search box for that.
I've tried to move away from Firefox, which is why you'll probably see a lot of posts about suggestions for IE; but if I was using Firefox full-time, I'd probably have Live Local and a few others in there, too.