The K Desktop Environment

5.17. Enhanced Browsing

5.17.1. Introduction

Konqueror offers some features to enhance your browsing experience. Currently, one feature that has been implemented is the use of "Internet Keywords".

You may already have noticed that KDE is very internet friendly. For example, you can click on the "Run" menu item or type the keyboard shortcut assigned to that command (Alt-F2, unless you have changed it) and type in a URI. [1]

Internet keywords make it easier for you to connect to URIs that you frequently use, by allowing you to define short descriptive keywords to access these resources. Suppose that your favorite search engine is Google. Instead of typing http://www.google.com in the Konqueror location bar or the "Run" dialog, you can define a keyword, so that you can simply type gg: (the : after the keyword is needed) and let Konqueror figure out what you mean.

It gets better! Say, after having used the Google search engine for a while, you notice that whenever you search for a phrase such as Konqueror, the URI that is generated looks like http://www.google.com/search?q=Konqueror. You can define your keyword to accept the search phrase as an argument so that you can do a Google search simply by typing expressions like gg:Konqueror, gg:Konqueror+Browser, or gg:"Konqueror, the Ultimate Browser".

You can use keywords in KDE wherever you would normally use URIs. Keywords for several search engines should already be configured on your system, but you can add new keywords, and change or delete existing ones in the enhanced browsing control module.

5.17.2. Use

There is a single tab in this control module. The title of the tab is "Internet Keywords".

The top of the dialog has a checkbox labeled "Enable Internet Keywords". If this option is selected, you can use internet keywords in KDE.

Also at the top of the dialog, there is a dropdown list of all the known keywords, which is labeled "Search Fallback". You can either select one of the keywords from the list or leave it at "None". If a search returns no results, then the URI referred to in the fallback list is tried.

The descriptive names of defined internet keywords are shown in a listbox. You may have to use the horizontal scrollbar and move to the right side of the list to see the actual keywords associated with the descriptive names. As with other lists in KDE, you can click on a column heading to toggle the sort order between ascending and descending.

If you click on a specific entry in the list of defined internet keywords, the details for that entry are shown in text boxes which are located immediately below the list. In addition to the descriptive name for the item, you can also see the URI which is used, as well as the associated shortcuts which you can type anywhere in KDE where URIs are expected.

The text boxes are used not only for displaying information about an item in the list of internet keywords, but also for modifying or adding new items. Notice that there are two buttons below the text boxes. Initially, these buttons have the captions "Change" and "Delete", and the first of these buttons is disabled. Clicking the "Delete" button has the expected effect of removing the currently selected item from the list of internet keywords.

If you change the contents of either the "Search URI" or the "URI Shortcuts" text box, the button labeled "Change" will be enabled so that you may save the changes you have made. On the other hand, if you change the contents of the "Search Provider Name" text box, the "Change" button will be replaced by an "Add" button so that you may create a new entry in the list of internet keywords.

If you examine the contents of the "Search URI" text box, you will find that most, if not all of the entries have a \1 in them. This sequence of two characters acts as a parameter, which is to say that they are replaced by whatever you happen to type after the : character in the keyword. Let's consider some examples to clarify this idea.

Suppose the URI was http://www.google.com/search?q=\1, and gg is a shortcut to this URI. Then, typing gg:alpha is equivalent to http://www.google.com/search?q=alpha. You could type anything after the : character; whatever you have typed simply replaces the \1 characters.

You can also have shortcuts without parameters. Suppose the URI was file:/home/me/mydocs/kofficefiles/kword and the shortcut was mykword. Then, typing mykword: is the same as typing the complete URI. Note that there is nothing after the : when typing the shortcut.

5.17.3. Section Author

This section written by:

Krishna Tateneni

Notes

[1]

Uniform Resource Identifier. A standardized way of referring to a resource such as a file on your computer, a world wide web address, an email address, etc.