The search box is located in the upper right
corner of IE and Firefox while Chrome has this thing integrated in the address
bar itself. The function is however the same – it offers you a convenient way
to search using your favorite search engine.
Other than search, there are some more interesting
uses of the search bar as well.
1. Avoid
Spelling Mistakes
If you writing an email inside the browser and are
unsure about the spelling of some word, you can simply type that misspelled
word in the search box.
Google will immediately offer you the correct spelling
as a query suggestion that you can copy-paste into your email message.
2.
Clean-up Formatting from Copied Text
When copying content from a web page into an email
message, you can first paste that text into your browser’s search box and then
copy it to the clipboard.
This will automatically convert the rich text into
plain text removing all the hyperlinks and other formatting that you don’t want
to add to your email message.
3.
Correct Grammar Errors
The search box can also help you fix grammatical
errors in your sentences.
Say you sometimes get confused between words like
‘affect’ and ‘effect’ or between ‘advise’ and ‘advice.’ In that case, just type
the whole sentence in the search box and it should save you from making that
silly grammatical error again.
4.
Search Box as a Notepad
The search bar can be used like a notepad as it
automatically stores all your search queries until you clear them manually.
This is so useful because you can easily save
pieces of text in the search bar that you may repeatedly need inside your
browser later.
For instance, I have an airway bill number of a
package that I can store in the search box by performing a search only once.
Later, when I am on the shipping company’s website to track the package status,
I can easily retrieve that number by simply typing the first few characters in
the search box -- there’s no need for me to hunt for the email that has that
tracking number.
5. As
your Password Manager
Ever since my Gmail account got hacked, I have
switched to a very long and complex password. Now it may be hard for someone to
guess that password but it is equally hard for me to type that lengthy string
correctly especially when everything in a password field is represented as
asterisk characters.
