Searching the Internet using the search field

There can be a dedicated search field in the browser toolbar which can be used to search for web sites in various internet search engines. Use the menu item View > Customize Toolbar to configure the toolbar and to add or remove the search field, if necessary.

To initiate a search, just enter the keywords in the search field and press the return key. Clicking the icon at the left of the search field will open a popup menu where you can select the search engine that is used for the search. While entering the search term. iCab also opens a list of suggestions from where you can directly pick a search term.

Searching the Internet using the address field

You can also use the address field to do searches, so the dedicated search field is not really necessary. Whenever your input in the address field can not be resolved into an internet address the input will be treated as search term. By default iCab uses the default search engine for the search via address field. But you can also select another search engine if you enter the "key" that is assigned to the search engine (in the search engine settings), followed by a space character and the search term. So for example if the key "g" is assigned to "Google" and "w" to "Wikipedia", then entering "w test" will search for "test" at Google and entering "w test" will search for "test" at Wikipedia, entering "test" only, will search using the default search engine.

Searching the current selection

If you select a word or phrase in the web page itself and then select the menu item Edit > Find > Find Selection in Internet, iCab will search for the selected text using the default search engine (which is the one that is used in the search field). The search result is then displayed in a new tab or window.

Searching in the current window

Use the menu item Edit > Find > Find (keyboard shortcut Cmd + F) to search a text location within the current window. A small search bar will open where you can enter the search term. The search results are marked in yellow in the current web site and you can use the arrow keys to jump between the occurrences of the search term.

Configuring the Internet Search

The internet search engines that can be used in the search or address field can be configured in the preferences dialog in the Searches panel. Here you can add new search engines or remove existing ones you don't need. You can also change the key letters that will be used in the URL field to identify the search engine.