[p4bl0]

Whoa. I knew some people sadly use Google even when they know the url, but this is just... wtf?!

No wonder why there's so many phishing spams, people so uneducated for web usage must get owned all the time... Maybe it's time for primary school to teach children basics about how to use a computer a bit more safely. The problem with this is that every time I saw something like it, it was actually advertisement for Microsoft products dispensed by teachers who didn't knew what a url is (and they're not to blame for that).

[SandB0x]

I know several highly educated people who type "google" into the Google search box in Firefox to get to Google.

You and I are almost certainly doing equally bizarre and convoluted things in other areas of our lives.

[adolph]

Google search bar is truly the command line of the Internet.

[jeffool]

I don't think I ever really understood how "odd" I must seem to some people when using YubNub...

[adolph]

Thats pretty cool looking:

http://yubnub.org/

[jeffool]

I suppose I could've explained it... It's ideal for keyboard-heavy users.

Instead of typing a search term into the search box and Ctrl+Arrow-ing to the search engine I want to use, with YubNub (in Firefox and Chrome, maybe IE?) you type in a command for what you want to do.

"g FDR" does a Google search of "FDR". b Bing, y Yahoo, yt YouTube, CNN, ESPN, IMDB, and on and on.

There's even some slightly stronger commands: "tr Chi Eng 晚安" uses Google Translate from Chinese to English, telling me "晚安" means "good night".

Yeah, I mostly use the "g" and "yt" commands, but I love the flexibility without having to arrange search engines. I just remember a few letters/commands. For a long time I'd resorted to typing "site:imdb.com" as my first search term into a Google search box. No more.

Also, you can define your own shortcuts! On a whim, I pointed XBLA to the Xbox Live marketplace at Xbox.com, and it works wonderfully. So now I can just type "xbla Trenched" and get to the page so I can buy the game with a click.

A few of their "Golden Egg" commands: http://yubnub.org/kernel/golden_eggs?args=

[p4bl0]

As sesqu said, this features is built into firefox. I only have a window-wide url bar on my firefox and extensively use these "keyworded" bookmarks.

So in my url bar I can "g foo" to search "foo" using google, "wp foo" for wikipedia fr, "wpe foo" for wikipedia english, "imdb foo" for imdb, "yt foo" for youtube, "dm foo" for dailymotion, "gdv foo" to load the document which url is "foo" into google docs viewer, "tw" take me to twitter, "fb" to facebook, "hn" to Hacker News, "mail" to gmail, "reader" to google reader, "in" to linked in... I don't have to all list in my head, it's mostly a finger habits now.

What is really cool since firefox has the awesomebar is that it is aware of this and display the actual url so when i type "imdb foo bar" i see "http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=foo+bar at the top of the proposed url.

This is really handy for people like me who mostly use their keyboard: this powerful firefox feature is just a ctrl+L away when I'm already in firefox :-).

[sesqu]

This functionality is actually built into Firefox and Chrome, and I'd be shocked if at least Opera didn't have it too. It's the "keyword" field in search engine settings.

I believe multiple parameters are also allowed, but not having used them, can't vouch.

[sili]

To use an analogy, humanity is still an equivalent of a bunch of 3 year olds alone in a middle of a busy city square as far as web maturity goes. Some might know not to wonder into the car traffic but would still fall for a stranger with a candy in his van.

[Despite]

The unification of search and URL bar in Firefox, Chrome, and mobile browsers makes this even more common, at least for me. I don't always know if the browser is going to find a bookmark, something in my history, search Google, or try to open an URL.

[saraid216]

For what it's worth, they were definitely pushing it when I was in college, and as far as I know, it's expanding into the high school level and possibly further. And actually spreading it was an explicit goal of many librarians and librarians-to-be I knew.

It could be better, certainly, but it's also being worked on.