Getting Started

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1). Setup Browser

The first step is to change your browser's default search engine to KeyFu.

Chrome or Chromium

  1. Click the Tool menu Tool Menu in the browser
  2. Select Options (or Preferences)
  3. Click the Basics tab
  4. Click the Manage Search Engines... button
  5. Scroll down until you find KeyFu, hover over it and click Make Default

Firefox

  1. Click the drop-down to the left of the search box (usually the Google icon)
  2. Select Add "KeyFu"

2). Add Keyword

  1. Open a new tab
  2. Use your browser's search shortcut to activate a search
    • Linux/Windows: Ctrl+K
    • Mac (Firefox): ⌘+K
    • Mac (Chrome/Chromium): ⌘-Option-F
  3. Type :add facebook and hit Enter (you can omit the second argument to see a browsable list of all keywords)
  4. Type fb into the textbox and hit Enter
  5. Hit Ctrl+Enter to save (or click the Save button)

3). Use Keyword

  1. Activate the search bar (see above for shortcuts)
  2. Type fb and hit Enter
  3. Notice you were redirected to www.facebook.com
  4. Activate the search bar again
  5. Type fb new york city and hit Enter
  6. Notice you were redirected to www.facebook.com/search.php?q=new+york+city

This process of activating a browser's search functionality, entering a keyword and hitting the Enter key is known as running a keyword (ex: run fb means activate search, type fb and hit the Enter key).

4). Create a Custom Keyword

Now lets say we want a keyword for the nodejs mailing list, but it doesn't exist when we search for it with the :add keyword. To solve this KeyFu allows you to create custom keywords.

  1. Run :edit nml (node mailing list)
  2. Notice the three input fields, the first is the key (nml), the second is the type (we'll just use link for now) and the third is the body (which is empty)
  3. The link type supports a very basic syntax, the first line is executed if a keyword is run without additional text, otherwise the second line is run. With that in mind, type http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs on the first line.
  4. Next open http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs in a new window
  5. Type TEST into the search box and click the Search this group button
  6. Copy and paste the resulting URL onto the second line and replace all instances of TEST with %s
  7. Hit Ctrl+Enter (or click the Save button)
  8. Now run nml and nml meetup

We've now created a custom keyword that we can access via the nml key, without additional text this keyword will redirect to the nodejs mailing list frontpage and with text it will search the nodejs mailing list.

If we had only entered one url (either the direct link or the search link), KeyFu would try to be smart about doing the right thing.

5). Manage Keywords

  1. Run :list to view all your keywords
  2. Run :list f to view all your keywords starting with the letter f
  3. Run :rename fb facebook to rename the fb keyword to facebook
  4. Run :delete facebook to delete the facebook keyword

6). Getting More Information

  1. Run :cheatsheet or :cs for a list of commands
  2. Visit the help section