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Search Engines in Firefox

I’ve been using Firefox for a while now and played with a bunch of the extension – I have a list here of the ones I like.  Another feature that FF has is an integrated text field for searching for something on various sites.  So instead of having to go to google to look something up, you can just type it in this text field on the browser.  FF comes by default with “engines” for Google, Amazon, Ebay, Dictionary.com and Creative Commons.

I’ve downloaded toolbars in the past that did this in Internet Explorer, but was never very impressed, and my initial impression of this feature on FF was the same.  One of the things that got to me was the inconvenience of having to click on the field.  I tried figuring out a way to tab over to the field, but that didn’t seem to work, so I decided it wasn’t possible.  I’m one of those people who uses the keyboard as much as I can over the mouse, especially when dealing with a situation where I know I’m going to be entering text – and that’s what the whole search thing is about!

Today I read a post on Engadget about how someone had created an engine for searches for their site in FF and that led me to Mozilla’s page dedicated to these.  Like FF’s extensions and themes, one can install new search engines, and there are quite a few of them out there.  I went browsing and came up with a bunch for sites that I go to on a fairly regular basis, or ones that looked like they might be very useful.  
                                        
Doing a little more digging, I found that I can get to the search field easily with a control-K or control-E on my PC (probably the same for the Mac?).  So far so good, however, there didn’t seem to be an obvious way of actually specifying what search engine you wanted to use.  It’s one thing if you use one of these 99% of the time, but what if you use a variety of them?  I discovered that when you hit control-K, and if there’s a no previous search word in the field, you can click the up or down arrow to present you with a scrollable list of previous search words.  If there was a word already there, it will just highlight it and the arrow keys don’t do anything unless you hit delete to clear the field.  Instead of hitting the arrow keys, if you hit control in combination with the arrow keys, the little icon that represents which engine to use changes!  Voila!  The only problem is that you now have to distinguish the search engine you want by this tiny icon.  It’s better than nothing, but I wish someone would change this to simply pop up the same list that you see in my screen capture, which currently is only available by… yes clicking on the mouse on that little engine icon.  The other little nigly problem I have is that I can’t see a way of removing these engines.  It’s probably something I’ve just overlooked, but there should be some kind of “manage engines” screen linked to the pull-down list of engines.

In any case, despite the fact that the interface isn’t optimal to my peculiar preferences, the feature does seem to be potentially extremely powerful.  It theoretically lets you find a piece info by hitting a key combo (control-K), typing a word, number, etc. into the field, and if necessary hitting another key combo of control-down-arrow until the desired engine is selected, and then finally hitting enter.  Seems like a process that could take a few seconds before results pop up as opposed to browsing to a new site, clicking into the field you need, typing the search, and hitting return.  I just tried this out and it took me approximately 3 or 4 seconds to look up Liv Tyler in IMDB and get the results on my screen – from thought to result in a few seconds.  Doing it in the standard way took at least twice as long.  The differential will vary, I know, but all in all, I feel a bit silly for initially discounting what could potentially be such a powerful tool!  Here’s a list of the ones I installed with links to install them yourself if you are using Firefox [correction: there doesn't seem to be a way to easily create these links, but I'm trying to contact th developer community to see if it's possible and if it is I'll be updating this entry - for now, you'll have to settle for just a list - you can go to the site to install them yourself]

  • Wikipedia - the collaborative encyclopedia – the English version
  • IMDB – Internet Movie Database
  • Pubmed Books – search for books geared to professionals in Medicine
  • WebMD – Medical lookups
  • Moviefone Location – type a zipcode to get a list of theaters and what they’re playing
  • Moviefone title – type in a movie title to get a list of theathers it’s playing in
  • MRQE - search printed or online reviews for a film
  • Daypop – search both regular websites and the blogosphere in one shot.
  • Froogle – search Google’s comparison shopping engine for a given product
  • Shopping.com – similar to Froogle
  • PriceGrabber – another price comparison engine
  • Yahoo! Auctions – why be satisfied with only eBay’s auctions?
  • Amazon.com Auctions – yet more auctions
  • Yahoo Yellow Pages – find a store or company, etc. (this is one of those where you need to also specify where you are searching, but if you already have done this previously, it’s probably set in a cookie and doesn’t need to be done again)
  • Torrentsearch – Mmmmm files….
  • Craigs List For Sale – the local version of eBay, or something like that.  I’ve never used it personally but have heard a bit about it
  • The Quotations Page – to figure out where the hell that thing you just said came from!
  • Jewish Encyclopedia – never used it, but figured it might be useful when a non-jewish friend asks why shellfish isn’t kosher, or somesuch, and since my own knowledge of this stuff is lacking to say the least!
  • HowStuffWorks – when you really need to know why that evil sump pump just decided to stop working and create an indoor pool in your house
  • AllRecipes – give the microwave a break and cook some real food!
  • Epicurious – I think this is another recipe sight or general culinary/food info site
  • Acronym Finder – What is this damn “FF” I keep seeing everywhere?
  • Webster Thesaurus – like, uh… you know!
  • Wordorigins.org – for when you’re really bored

posted Friday, 3 December 2004

A visitor made this comment,
Holy cow, that's a lot more than I have! My biggest complaint is that I can't figure out how to change the icons - I'm forever searching Google Images when I want to be searching Google, and vice versa. (That is, I will have completed an Images search and moved on to something else, then I hit Ctrl-K to search Google and hit enter and realize the bar was still set to Images.)

Meredith

comment added :: 3rd December 2004, 15:35 GMT-05
HappyCeli made this comment,
I only have default Search Engines on my Firefox (actually I've installed my Firefox a few weeks ago, and I'm still trying to figure out how to customize it)
My Firefox is a Japanese version so it has Japanese SE on it. I checked Japanese Mozilla site but then it lead me to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html, so I think I can only install English SE now.

Visit me @ http://michellecelica.blogspot.com/

comment added :: 3rd December 2004, 23:56 GMT-05
Levi Wallach made this comment,
Meredith, I just found it! You just go to the directory where these files are found - by default on a PC it's C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins - and this is where you can delete stuff, but each search engine has a corresponding png file, so I'm assuming you can just use an editor to edit this or create an entirely new one to replace it...

Visit me @ https://twelveblackcodemonkeys.com

comment added :: 4th December 2004, 19:16 GMT-05
A visitor made this comment,
superb!

nod

comment added :: 5th December 2004, 14:28 GMT-05
Shoegazer made this comment,
Not sure if this is still relevant (December after all!) But once you're in the search field, holding down CTRL+<up or down arrow> will scroll through your search engines.
comment added :: 31st August 2005, 05:20 GMT-05
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