Hacking Firefox - part 23 ppsx

Adjusting the Default Google Search A fresh install of Firefox uses Google for all searches, whether from the location bar or the search box in the upper-right corner.. If you enter your

Search Hacks

Aweb browser is an information-gathering tool Sometimes you know

where you need to go, so you use bookmarks and familiar links, but eventually you’ll need to search the Web to look up new sites and sources of information Firefox includes some excellent search tools and

makes it easy for you to modify the browser to suit your search habits And

some nifty tricks can speed up your searches and help you find what you

need right away

Adjusting the Default Google Search

A fresh install of Firefox uses Google for all searches, whether from the

location bar or the search box in the upper-right corner If you enter your

search terms in the location bar, Firefox checks with Google and then takes

you to the top search result site In other words, it’s the same as if you

searched from http://www.google.comand clicked the I’m Feeling

Lucky button

The search box in the upper-right corner behaves a little differently When

you enter your search terms there, Firefox treats it like a normal Google

search and shows you a web page with all of the results If you prefer to see

all of your search results but like performing your searches from the location

bar, you can adjust Firefox’s default Google search through about:config

From the about:config list, type keyword to filter out all but the two items

related to keyword searches You should see these two items:

keyword.URL

keyword.enabled

Leave the second one alone and focus on the URL setting By default, it

should look like this:

Keyword.URL default string

http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+

Lucky&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=

Notice the words I’m Feeling Luckyin the URL? That setting tells

Firefox to submit the search to Google and return the same result as if you’d

clicked that button on their site To adjust it so that a location bar search

shows you all the results from Google, double-click on the item and change

the URL to look like this instead:

˛ Customize searches with Google

˛ Add search tools to context menus

˛ Search within pages using Find-As-You-Type

˛ Add toolbars to your browser to increase your searching power

chapter

in this chapter

by Phil Catelinet

Using Quick Searches

Firefox also lets you search different sites from the location bar by putting a letter or keyword

in front of the search terms These searches are in the default bookmarks under the Quick Searches folder For example, to search for the definition of politics at Dictionary.com, type

dict politics in the location bar and press Enter Firefox takes you to Dictionary.com,

display-ing the results of your search

You can add your own location bar searches to Firefox using any site with a search function Here’s how to add a Microsoft.com option to your browser

1 Go to http://www.microsoft.com

2 Locate the search box in the web page.

3 Right-click in the search box on the web page and select “Add a Keyword for this

Search .”

4 An Add Bookmark popup window appears (see Figure 12-1) Fill in a name for your

search and type a keyword (such as ms) in the Keyword field.

You might want to prepend the keyword to the name of your bookmark so when you look in the Quick Searches bookmarks folder you don’t need to check the properties of each bookmark

to remember the keyword

5 Select a folder for the bookmark Click OK.

You can put a Quick Search bookmark anywhere, but I suggest keeping them in the Quick Searches folder so you can find them later

F 12-1: Adding a Quick Search to your bookmarks.

Now go back to your location bar Type ms windows bsod and press Enter Firefox searches

Microsoft’s web site using the terms “windows bsod” and shows you the results just as if you’d browsed to microsoft.com and used their search box

Hacking the Search Box

The real power of searching with Firefox is in the built-in search box in the browser’s upper-right corner While Google is the default search engine, Firefox comes with several other search plugins in a fresh install: Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, and others To choose a different search plugin for a particular search, click on the icon in the window and select an engine from the drop-down list, as shown in Figure 12-2

F IGURE 12-2: Firefox’s built-in search engine options.

You can add new search engines to the list by clicking on the Add Engines link You’ll see a few popular search sites linked there; click on any of them and you’ll be prompted to confirm the plugin installation The new engine appears as a drop-down option immediately

reopen the browser, Yahoo! will still be the selected search engine.

To remove a search plugin, browse to the searchplugins folder and delete the SRC and GIF files for the plugin, then restart Firefox

Search plugins consist of two files:

An SRC file that contains the code telling Firefox how to use search terms for that site

A GIF file that provides the icon for the search box

These files are kept in the searchplugins subfolder of your Firefox installation directory (not

your Firefox user profile directory) If you uninstall and reinstall Firefox, you will lose any plug-ins you downloaded from Mycroft or other sites

The typical plugin SRC file has two or three sections, as shown in the following code example from Firefox’s built-in Amazon.com search plugin:

# Search Plug-in for Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com)

# by Paul Millar <dazzle@edazzle.net> created: 18 January 2003

# updated by Rafael Ebron <rebron@meer.net>

<SEARCH version = “7.1”

name=”Amazon.com”

description=”Amazon.com Search”

method=”GET”

action=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/”

>

<input name=”field-keywords” user>

<input name=”mode” value=”blended”>

<input name=”tag” value=”mozilla-20”>

<input name=”sourceid” value=”Mozilla-search”>

</search>

<BROWSER update=”http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/plugins/amazondotcom.src” updateIcon=”http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/plugins/amazondotcom.png”

updateCheckDays=”3”

>

The SEARCHsection defines the plugin and tells Firefox what site will be used for the search.

The version number is the highest version of Netscape (not Firefox) with which the plugin has

been tested It’s irrelevant for our purposes The input tag with the word usertells the browser the actual user-entered search request

The BROWSERsection gives Firefox a way to automatically update the plugin if the site’s search system changes and if the plugin author uploads a new version to the Mozilla site

Some plugins also include an INTERPRETsection between SEARCHand BROWSERthat tells Firefox how to display the results it receives from the site

Mycroft includes a detailed tutorial on plugin design; you can find it at http://mycroft mozdev.org/deepdocs/quickstart.html

Searching from the Web Page Itself

Admit it: sometimes you’re lazy When surfing you’ll come across a word or phrase that you’d search the Web for if only that search box wasn’t at the top of the screen Now you don’t have

to type your search queries anymore There are several search extensions available that let you right-click on terms in your web page and search the Web for those terms — no typing required

Web Searches Using the Context Menu

Using the Context Search extension, you can add a search option to the right-click menu in a web page After you install the extension, highlight a word or phrase, then right-click and select “Search Web for [your word or phrase will appear here].” Not only can you search the Web for the term, but you can also search using any of your installed search plugins You can see Context Search in action in Figure 12-3 If your web page has a reference to George Washington and you want to see what books Amazon.com sells about him, just highlight George Washington, right-click on the selection, and choose Amazon.com from the search engine list The results will appear in a new tab or window, depending on how you’ve config-ured those options

You can get Context Search from http://www.cusser.net/extensions/

contextsearch/

Define Words in Web Pages

I love using Dictionary.com to find definitions and synonyms, but sometimes it’s a chore to go

to the site and search, or even to use the Quick Search option with “dict [my word here]” in the location bar You can get several extensions that add dictionary searches to your context menu, and two of them are covered here: DictionarySearch and DICT Search Despite the similar names, they look up words in different ways

F IGURE 12-3: Context Search brings your search plugins right to the web page.

DictionarySearch adds a simple context menu option when you right-click on a highlighted word Selecting “Dictionary search for [highlighted word]” brings up a new tab or window with the results from Dictionary.com You can add other online dictionaries to the context menu from the extension’s options window, shown in Figure 12-4

F IGURE 12-4: User options for the DictionarySearch extension.

You can find the DictionarySearch extension at http://dictionarysearch.mozdev org/

DICT Search looks up words in online dictionaries using the DICT network protocol Instead

of searching for words in online versions of commercial dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, DICT Search looks in user-maintained public dictionaries and online databases Because it uses sites such as the Jargon File (jargon.org) and the Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms, DICT Search is particularly well suited for technical and computer terms The method is the same as with DictionarySearch: highlight the word you want to define, then right-click and select Define [word] The extension displays its results in a special popup window, which you can see in Figure 12-5

F IGURE 12-5: DICT Search results appear in a new window.

Get DICT Search at http://dict.mozdev.org

your own easily via the Translate extension It adds a Translate function to Firefox’s Options menu and the web page context menu The former translates an entire web page to English, while the latter will translate highlighted text and present the results in a new tab or window Translate uses Altavista’s Babelfish translation engine If you’d prefer to translate pages from English to another language, Translate’s Options window lets you change your preferred lan-guage to any of 12 others, including French, Italian, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and more (see Figure 12-6)

F IGURE 12-6: Translate’s list of available languages.

The Translate extension is available at https://addons.update.mozilla.org/

extensions/moreinfo.php?id=181

Put Your Search Results in a Sidebar

The sidebar is a feature of the Mozilla suite that lets you keep your bookmarks, history, search tools, and other functions on the side of your browser window Firefox’s sidebar functions are initially limited to just bookmarks, downloads, and history, but you can add new tools to the sidebar via extensions One such tool is SearchStation, which gives you search and translator options

SearchStation’s web search sidebar performs web searches but keeps the results in the sidebar.

That way you can refer back to them without having to switch away from your current web page Figure 12-7 shows a Google search using SearchStation When you click on a result, the page loads in the active tab in the same browser window SearchStation uses your search plug-ins, so you can search Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon.com, and any other sites using plugins you’ve installed

F IGURE 12-7: Searching Google with the SearchStation extension.

The Translator sidebar is like a miniature version of the Babelfish or Google translator sites

It translates text you type or cut and paste into the space provided, but not entire web pages

(You’ll need the Translate extension I discussed earlier to do that.) You can choose among 15 languages (including English) to translate text in either direction, and you have three to five different translation engines at your disposal (depending on the languages you’ve selected — not all translation sites handle all 15 languages) You can see an example of the Translator fea-ture in Figure 12-8

You can get SearchStation from http://members.lycos.co.uk/toolbarpalette/

searchstation/index_en.html