Thursday 29 April 2004

The Limitations of Tools

My web browser Firefox (and, I would presume, Mozilla proper) has a nifty feature I discovered this morning - keywords for bookmarks that can be parameterised. So, for example, you can define a bookmark to Google in a certain way, give it a keyword, and then search just by typing "google frogs" in the address bar. (Not that you would do that, however, since Firefox has a built-in search box, too.)

The second part of the puzzle is our web proxy running here at work. It performs extensive and over-paranoid site blocking, but does save us heaps of bandwidth on banner ads. Still, some sites are blocked unfairly, and a way around the proxy for those sites would be good.

I found a way around it by using Google translation - tell it to translate from English to English, and the proxy is blind. I've memorised the URL prefix to append to any blocked site to view it via this method.

Parameterised keyword bookmarks seemed like a perfect way to avoid typing the longish URL prefix, so I gave it a go. I defined a parameterised keyword bookmark, found a blocked site, and typed my keyword before the URL in the address bar. Firefox couldn't handle all the dots and slashes as part of a parameter and fell flat on its face. Sigh.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think I'll file a bug report.
PPS - For all I know, this is by design.

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