Re: gEDA-user: Cool Firefox feature

[Randall Nortman <geda-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 04:51:30PM -0600, John Doty wrote:
> 
> Discovered this by accident:
> 
> In Firefox, type an electronic part number (like 2N930 or ECH-U) into  
> the URL field (not the search field), and hit return. For most of the  
> cases I've tried, it immediately pops up a pdf datasheet. I'm an old  
> databook packrat, and I'm feeling obsolete...

In case anybody is wondering why this works, it uses Google's "I'm
Feeling Lucky" feature.  So, if you type something into the location
bar that doesn't look like a URL and doesn't resolve to a hostname,
firefox submits it to Google and follows the first hit returned by
Google.  For part numbers, this is often, but not always, a link to
the datasheet PDF, or else the manufacturer's web page for the part,
which will have a link to the PDF.  But there's nothing magic about
part numbers -- you can do the same thing with any sort of search
terms.

Personally, I find this feature occasionally annoying, since if I
mistype a hostname, firefox will happily submit it to Google and take
me to the first result, which is rarely what I want.  Sometimes it
takes me to the website I meant to type without me even realizing I
did something wrong, which also bothers me. (I like having the
opportunity to learn from my mistakes, after all.)  Of course, you can
disable the feature in the preferences if you like.