Creating a shortcut to a URL

[iota]

Hi All,

Just stumbled upon FARR via Farrmilk (fantastic, by the way!). One thing that I'm missing is how to add a simple shortcut to a URL. I love the browse to feature, but I want to be able to type "customer logs" in Farr and have it come up with a link to my google document.

I'd used launchy in the past, and it was as easy as creating a new shortcut using their web plugin which linked the phrase "customer logs" to the URL.

I did some searching but couldn't find an answer, thanks for helping me in my ignorance.

Nick

[mouser]

Welcome to the site iota!  Glad you are liking FARR.

Ok so this is easy enough to do but i must say up front that FARR could use a little wizard to make these things easier.

There are a ton of FARR videos by the way that show how to do all sorts of things; you can find them: here.


But to be brief, in FARR any time you want to create a custom thing you can type that does something means you are working with "Aliases/Groups".

So:

• Open up options and switch to the Aliases/Groups tab.
• Choose myaliases.alias from the drop down in order to select the alias file where your own custom ones go.
• Right click in the list and say "Add new entry"
• For the "Alias Trigger Text" specify the next you want to match on, like: customer logs
• Then in the Resuts list put your urls (including the http) or any other file location, etc.; you can put multiple items in here.
• Leave the rest set to defaults.
• Click Ok and then close options, you are done.

Let me know if it works.


ps1.
At some point I need to make a little wizard to guide people through creating basic aliases from within the program.  It's not that it's hard but it should be easier to do without looking up help file, etc.

ps2.
If you are creating an alias to a file (not a url) there is actually an easier way -- which is to first find the file using normal FARR searching in normal window, and then right-click on the file and then choose "Add to group alias".

[skajfes]

I do it like this:

• copy the entire url of the page
• paste it into farr main window
• right click on the result
• add to group alias
• new alias group

Only thing that I've noticed is that if I name an alias with two or more words - FARR won't open it.

[mouser]

clever.

Only thing that I've noticed is that if I name an alias with two or more words - FARR won't open it.

yes i suppose aliases have to be one whole word -- or i think multiple alternative words with comas?

[iota]

Great it worked mouser! I'd tried to set an alias before, but for some reason it hadn't worked. This makes my life a lot easier!

A wizard would be wonderful, especially for the newbies ; )

[johnt50]

This advice helps a bit, but it's not what I was hoping to find.  My problem is URL related, but a bit different.  I would like to use FARR to open particular bookmarks on my Firefox browser.  Ideally, I would be able to enter "donationcoder", and FARR would find that URL for me.  The only way I have found to do that so far is to export the bookmarks to a file, and then import them into IExplorer.  As I"m sure you know, when IExplorer creates bookmarks, it puts them in a directory called Favorites.  Turns out the FARR can search that directory, and then return the URL that I am looking for.  But that's all a bit klugy.  What I would like to see is the capacity for FARR to find my URLs in the Firefox bookmark file.  But I don't know how to do that.  Is it possible?  (Please note that I am really enjoying using this utility.)

[lanux128]

What I would like to see is the capacity for FARR to find my URLs in the Firefox bookmark file.  But I don't know how to do that.  Is it possible?  (Please note that I am really enjoying using this utility.)

you can do that with the FarrFox plugin which can search IE, Firefox and Opera bookmarks.

FarrFox option dialog

[lanux128]

i just realised that for Firefox 3, there is an extra step involved to make the plugin work. check out the reference below.

In firefox 3 -- the new default method of storing bookmarks is incompatible with the way FarrFox searches bookmarks.
If you still want to use FarrFox you can do so by following the short instructions here on telling Firefox 3 to keep the bookmarks html file updated regularly:
http://www.lytebyte.com/2008/06/19/how-to-auto-export-firefox-3-bookmarks-to-bookmarkshtml/

After making the change on that page i had to exit firefox and give it a minute to update the bookmarks file -- after that all worked fine.

[mouser]

ps. if anyone is willing to write some c++ code to find and open up the ff 3+4 sqlite database and let me query a list of all bookmarks, i will incorporate it into a new release of FarrFox plugin.