I used DDG for two months and as a developer trying to find the latest bugs, code snippets, and help; It was a lot harder on DDG than in Google. I would always end up having to type google.com <tab> in my address bar to search for programming related items. That being said, people have pointed me to resources to help me improve my search results.

The !Bang syntax is excellent for searching language/framework/library specific answers. Just append it to the end of a search if you need to.

[DuckDuckGo !Bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html)

If you still need a Google result, try appending !sp which will give you a Startpage result (Google result with privacy)

You don't need DDG for that. Both Firefox and Chrome support adding shortcut keywords for search boxes.

For example, in Firefox all you have to do is to right click on a search box and select "Add Keyword for this Search".

It's much better than DDG because:

1) if you care about privacy, then this is obviously the right way, as you don't have to redirect through a third-party's server

2) you can add shortcuts for whatever you want, without being limited to a fixed set. For instance I type "dex someWord" for getting the definition of words in my native language. I type "word hello" for doing a search on wordnik.com. I type "w definition" for Wikipedia. I type "mvn package" for doing a maven package search. I type "gem library" for doing a RubyGems search.

And yeah, it's easier to add a shortcut that's relevant to you, then it is to read that DDG document you linked to.

I haven't played with Firefox keywords really but isn't the saved search still going through whatever the default search engine is (in Firefox, Google)?

[Update] I guess my point is that DDG has it ready to go and the syntax is usually easy enough to figure out without building up one's own keyword list.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it just seems that DDG offers a better solution.

Example: I use the letter 'd' for DDG searches in the address bar. In the "Show all bookmarks" window for the DDG bookmark, I've filled in "Location: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s" and "Keyword: d" .

When I enter into the address bar: "d turkey trot [return]" Firefox turns that into "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turkey trot" and initiates the DDG search.

But you can use the same FF keyword feature to auto-generate a URL for any site. If you go to BoingBoing a lot, you could just enter 'bb [return]'.

[Note: some of the DDG 'bangs' are out of date ... try !js]

No, it doesn't go through default search engine, only one http direct get request to the target search engine.

Got it. I made DDG my default in the awesome bar, but I understand the benefits of the saved keyword approach better now.

I switched to DDG some time ago, and I totally live happy with it. Besides, lately they improved the quality a lot, both on the results and on speed performances.

The bang syntax is just awesome, and I rarely need to !g my results.

On DDG you can add !g to the start or end of a query and it will do the search on Google.

That's one of the best, and yet one of the worst feature of DuckDuckGo.

When I tried using it a while ago, I ended up always searching for "!g <query>", since I knew I would always get equal or better results.

I'm glad it's this easy to search on Google from DuckDuckGo, but it also makes the switch harder. Or, at least, it did for me.

I had the same problem. I switched to DDG and Firefox when the PRISM story broke but ended up using !g on so many queries I made Google my default again. I find Google much better when I'm searching for API docs, StackOverflow Q's etc.

Yeah I had the same problem. If I'm going to be in DDG but most of my searches are on Google, what's the point of me using DDG?

!sp will search on StartPage, which is a privacy-proxied Google search. That's my fallback if the default DDG search doesn't work.

same, everyone I know switched to Chrome, and always had said "why are you still using Firefox?". Because I've used it since 0.5 or whatever, I like the browser, I've stuck with it. It doesn't install a bunch of uninstallable tools into Windows either like any Google app does (Try and find where you uninstall the Google update binaries, it involves deleting folders, editing the registry, editing scheduled tasks)

Same thing here. I always used Firefox, and never got the hype about Chrome. I like Mozilla goals stated in their manifesto way more than Google's ambiguous "don't be evil" which doesn't even hold up to its promise.

I don't know why, but Firefox always takes so long to load for me. Personally I'm quite happy with Chrome.

Tree Style Tabs is cool! Have you got any other recommendations? Besides AdBlock+, NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere and Chatzilla?