Would you like to be able to highlight words on a page and choose the search engine or a site to look them up? This can be done in most web browsers, but it may not be a built-in feature.

A while back, I told you How to Add a Right Click Search Menu to Internet Explorer.   Now I’ll tell you how to add this to Firefox. Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see above, the word RSSis highlighted on the page. A right click on the highlighted word, brings up the context menu(or right click menu).

To add the Search formenu item, we’ll need to install an addon to Firefox. There are a few addons which add this type of function, but I like the SmartSearch addon.

Do you see all of the search engines listed in that menu? Those won’t be there when you use this addon the first time. You have to add them yourself. It’s easy to do, and the beauty of this is that you can add only the sites you like to search. Nobody will be giving you a pre-made list that they think you’ll like.

Here’s how to add a site to the Search formenu after SmartSearch is installed. I’m going to use Download.com as an example.

Go to download.com

When you see the search box, right click on it and choose Add a Keyword for this Search.

Next, you’ll need to fill out the name of the search and add your own short keywordfor it (as shown). You can see that I’ve chosen the two letters DLas the keyword.

Notice that the Folder says Bookmarks Menu. You are actually better off creating a new folder for all of your searches. I chose to call my folder quicksearch.

After saving, you’ll have a new search in your right click Search formenu.

There’s an additional benefit. Since you have a keywordon the bookmark, you can search from your address bar using that keyword. If you want to search for browsersat download.com, just type dl browsers  into the address bar and the results from download.com will quickly fill your page.

Here’s where to install SmartSearchfor Firefox.

Be sure to check out some of the other cool Firefox addons we’ve talked about in the past.

Happy searching!