Opera has sneaked in a fabulous new search feature – and I missed it completely! In looking up how to set up some shortcut searches, I stumbled across this and thought I’d share.

Opera 9 (and I think earlier versions) comes with a preconfigured search function, where you type the letter “g” and then the search terms you would have typed into Google’s search box and the search is performed for you. I have a couple of other searches set up as well, previously it was necessary to work out where in the query string to put your search and hack about with an ini file to get it working.

Not any more! On any site with a search box you can right click in it and choose “Create Search …”, you will then be asked to choose a shortcut letter to use with it. That’s so clever! And very non-techie to use.

Self-promoting example

In opera, go to lornajane and right-click in the Search box on the right-hand bar. Choose “Create Search …” and type “l” into the search box. Now in a new tab, type into the address bar:

l opera search

And guess where you’ll end up??

Usage

I have p for the PHP Website and w for Wikipedia, and am lost without them!