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Parametrized bookmarks

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browser tips and tricks

Let's say you're working with a few Github repos at once and you want to easily jump to pull requests of each. Or you want to take a rest and easily jump to one of your favorite subreddits for a bit. You don't need to create a bunch of bookmarks for all of them, you just need one!

Parametrized bookmarks

You create a bookmark like so: https://github.com/org-name/%s/pulls, you give it a name, for example, "pulls" and type "pulls service-name" in the address bar. You press enter and lo and behold, you will be properly pointed to the https://github.com/org-name/service-name/pulls website.

Same thing for the Reddit example. You create a bookmark like so: https://old.reddit.com/r/%s, you give it a name, for example, "reddit" and type "reddit subreddit-name". (Yes, I've used https://old.reddit.com, the superior version of Reddit 😄)

Notice the %s format specifier. If you've worked with C language in the past, you'll know that it denotes some string of arbitrary length. So whatever you write after the bookmark name, it will be placed instead of %s format specifier.

I've covered 3 of the most used web browsers: Firefox, Google Chrome and Edge. The same thing can be accomplished with Brave, while other browsers haven't been explored.

Firefox

Go to Bookmarks -> Manage bookmarks from the hamburger menu and create a new bookmark like so:

New bookmark in Firefox

Then simply write "pulls" in the address bar and add the repo name, like so:

Parametrized bookmark in Firefox's address bar

You notice straight away that the browser nows exactly where to go, to https://github.com.

Google Chrome

In Google Chrome, it's a bit more complicated.

Enter chrome://settings/searchEngines into the address bar. There is a Site Search at the bottom. Click on add and fill in the fields, like so:

New bookmark in Chrome

The end result should be exactly the same as in the Firefox.

Microsoft Edge

The same process as for the Google Chrome, except for the settings url, which is: edge://settings/searchEngines