OmniWeb Help

OmniWeb Help : Reference : OmniWeb Preferences : Shortcuts

Shortcuts

Shortcuts in OmniWeb enable you to quickly access and search your favorite sites using the search field in OmniWeb's toolbar, and the Address field (or Location bar).

Shortcut Preferences
The Shortcuts Preferences pane.

The simplest shortcuts allow you to assign a keyword to a URL. For example, you could assign the keyword omni to the URL www.omnigroup.com, allowing you to visit the site by simply entering the keyword omni into the address field and then pressing return. The shortcut would have the following attributes:

Name: The Omni Group
Keyword: omni
URL: www.omnigroup.com

Simple shortcuts can also be assigned using the Bookmarks interface. When the Info panel for a bookmark is displayed, a Keyword field lets you enter a keyword you can use as a shortcut for the full URL.

Search Shortcuts

Search shortcuts are a bit more complex. They still have a keyword and a URL associated with them, but these shortcuts can also handle extra information that you provide each time you use them. An example is the search shortcut for Google. Each time you use it you want to submit a different search query.

Name: Google
Keyword: google@
URL: http://www.google.com/search?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=%@

The important part of that keyword is the @ symbol, which tells OmniWeb that it is a search shortcut that accepts extra input. The important part of the URL is the %@. That's the placeholder that tells OmniWeb where your unique text for each search query should get inserted.

Name and Keyword

This table, and the corresponding text fields on the right, display the name and the keywords for all of your shortcuts. The Name of a shortcut is what is used in the Search item on the toolbar when selecting from all of your different search shortcuts. You can name a shortcut anything you like.

The Keyword for a shortcut is the text you can use to enter the shortcut into the address field. Our example above used 'omni' as the keyword.

URL

The URL is the destination for the shortcut. In the case of a search shortcut, it needs to include the characters %@ wherever the search term(s) should be inserted into the URL.

Method

For advanced users only. Depending on the requirements of the server the query is being sent to, either GET or POST is used to submit the request.

Parameter and Value

This table displays the parameters and values in an easy to read format. These are based on the URL for the shortcut.

See Searching on the Web for more information.

© 2004 The Omni Group