Switching between search engines in Firefox search box quickly?

Question

Firefox has this search box next to URL box, and to just use default search engine, it's just Cmd-K query Enter. If I want to query something else just this once - let's say flickr, it's far too much effort:

• Switch to mouse
• Open dropdown menu with search engine
• Select new engine
• Switch to keyboard
• Type query
• Switch to mouse again
• Open dropdown
• Select default engine back

Is there a better way to do this? Perhaps with some prefixes for each engine so I'd just type flickr cats and it would search cats on flickr? (no prefix => default engine)

Answer 1

Ctrl+Up/Down arrow switches to next/previous search engine in the list.

If you want the search box to always go back to the default after a non-default search, install and customize the SearchLoad Options extension.

Alternatively, you may be looking for Second Search.

If you really want to be able to use a specific engine by typing its name, you want something like Obnibar or even Firefox's built-in keyword search feature. There are many other extensions for variations on keyword searching. Browse the Firefox Add-ons website.