Dave, a friend of mine was showing off his superior knowledge of Microsoft Internet Explorer (though he, of course, called it “IE” and, once, “MSIE”) and really amazed me when in the Address bar he typed in something that caused it to give us a stock quote for the specified ticker symbol. How did he do that?
I can totally understand your not wanting to go back to this “friend” of yours to ask how he pulled up a stock quote, but fortunately the solution is pretty simple if you know that what we’re talking about are what Microsoft’s team calls IE Search Prefixes. Your first step is to install this little script.
Then, to get a stock quote, for example, type quote msft in the MSIE address box, then press Return (or Enter, depending on your keyboard). To learn more about a specific movie, say, Casablanca, try movie casablanca instead.
Here’s a full table of IE Search Prefixes, according to the MSN Search team’s Weblog:
Prefix | Alternate | Query Target | Example |
---|---|---|---|
define | definition, dictionary | MSN Search, web search with definition | define alpaca |
encarta | MSN Search, Encarta search | encarta history of china | |
images | image | MSN Search, image search | images corvette |
kb | Microsoft Knowledge Base | kb microsoft word | |
ms | Microsoft.com site | ms windows xp | |
movies | movie | MSN Movies | movies the incredibles |
msdn | Microsoft MSDN | msdn cocreateguid | |
msn | MSN Search, web search | msn chicken fried rice | |
music | MSN Music | music peter gabriel | |
news | MSN Search, news search | news iraq | |
shop | shopping | MSN Shopping | shop digital camera |
quote | stockquote | MSN Money, stock quote | quote msft |
syn | thesaurus | Encarta thesaurus | syn vanguard |
Us Mac OS X users don’t have to miss out on the fun either: if you want to have all these nifty prefixes available within the popular Apple Safari browser, just install the $12 Saft utility, which adds lots of cool features to Safari in addition to simple Address box prefix shortcuts.
Saft does include some nice default prefixes too, particularly if you don’t want to keep going to Microsoft’s sites for information. For example, the IE Search Prefix “movie” takes you to MSN Movies, whereas Saft’s prefix “imdb” takes you to Amazon’s Internet Movie Database (and, yes, you can easily modify it so that typing ‘movie’ would work too).
i don’t seem to find an ie anywhere, where do i find it? i need to go back to my sbc global .net account as i am paying for it.this will bypass my home phones! asap, thanks again
Hi Dave,
When I save a favourite WEB location, at the left hand side of the URL prefix there might be an icon which identifies the WEB site. However,not all WEB sites have this type of identifier. I am running Internet Explorer 7 within Vista Home Premium on a Toshiba Satellite mobile computer.
I have two questions:
1.) Why do these unique icons suddenly transform into the “boring” default Internet Explorer type? Can I prevent it from happening? It is also weird that this happens on my Home Page Tabs intermittently. If I close IE7 and then start it again I usually regain the special identifier icons associated with the unique WEB site such as the one associated with Yahoo! (Y!). The analogy for this icon is one that serves as a trademark.
2.) Can I tell before adding a WEB location to my favourites or adding it to one of my home page tabs whether there should be a unique “trademark” icon?
Your help would be so much appreciated Dave.
Howie
Well, yeah, if people would just wholesale leave the world of MSIE, I think the Web would be a better place and, frankly, we might have a bit less virus and spyware problems. But …
In your article “What are Internet Explorer search prefixes?” FireFox can do all this too and with out any scripts needing to be downloaded and installed!
Tell the world to drop IE and get FireFox.