Wow! Thanks, I've bookmarked this message. :-) > -----Original Message----- > From: Holly Bostick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 11 August 2005 13:39 > To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org > Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla & Google behind the > scenes payola > > > Michael Kintzios schreef: > > > [OT] > > Holly, you mention that you have a zillion search engines > incorporated > > in your browser . . . 8O > > Where do you get them from? How can these be added to a browser? > > [/OT] > > The vast majority of them come from mozdev.org itself. If you > click the > search engine button (the Google logo, in this case), you get a > drop-down list of available search engines (as you probably know, > Firefox includes several by default other than Google-- Amazon.com, > Creative Commons, Ebay, Yahoo, and dictionary.com). At the bottom of > this list there is an entry "More (or "Add) search engines", which, if > clicked, opens http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html . On this page, > you can find a whole lot of search engine plugins for any purpose-- > mostly for specific sites or purposes, including Gentoo Packages > (packages.gentoo.org), Gentoo Bugzilla, by both summary > (word/name) and > bug #, the Gentoo Forums, Gentoo-Portage, and the Gentoo > Wiki (although > all of these engines are not necessarily where you'd expect if you go > through the listing, but putting 'Gentoo' in the page's > search box will > bring them all up). Debian also has some engine plugins, as does > Mandrake (just one). Not to mention various dictionaries in many > languages, shopping sites, and other special interest > categories. Also, > a few sites that I visit have plugins that have not (yet) > been accepted > by Firefox, and so are available from the website itself. You may also > find this to be the case. > > There are two caveats: > > 1. this may have changed, but before the recent 'upgrade every day' > period (where Firefox was being revised every day over the course of 4 > days), the folder /usr/lib/MozillaFirefox/searchplugins (now > /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins) was a root-only > folder, meaning > that you had to install search engine plugins as root. It also meant > that an upgrade would remove all your installed plugins, > restoring the 5 > default plugins. There are Mozilla bugs 'open' for this issue, but I > don't know their current status. The bugs themselves are linked in the > thread of the MozillaZine forums I link to below. > > I solved this by a) changing the permissions of the > searchplugins folder > so that I could write to it as a user, so I could install > search engines > as a user; b) once installed, copying the searchplugins > folder to /root > as a backup, so that if an upgrade wiped the folder, I could just copy > it back. > > > 2) Search plugin order is rather random, which can be a problem if you > have a lot of search plugins. You can, however, set the order of your > search plugins. I set them up in groups of similar type, in order of > likelihood of use, with Google Linux-- rather than Google Main-- as > first (because my Google searches are more likely Linux-specific than > 'general'). Google itself is second, and the IMDB is third, since I'm > always running to my computer during commercials to get a > list of actors > in the movie I'm watching -- "I know her/him from > *somewhere*, but...." > Then dictionaries/thesauri (in two languages), then Gentoo-specific > engines, then other Linux engines-- LQF has a Firefox search > plugin, did > you know?-- and so on. > > The way to do this is to set up a user.js (easy with the ChromEdit > plugin), and is documented on the MozillaZine forums here: > http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=177335 (a summary is in > the first post, more detailed instructions on page 5, see the post by > Roger77, which gives the format for the entries). The nice thing about > this is that user.js is in your profile folder, thus is > unaffected by an > upgrade, so once you restore your backup plugins (if that's still > necessary), the reinstalled plugins will be in the correct order (your > order, in other words). > > Anyway, the search box is one of my favorite features of Firefox. I > watch my bf (a dedicated Mozilla Windows user) typing > 'synonym cadence' > in the *Google* Bar because he's trying to remember a(n English) word > for a kind of poetic rythmic title (which turned out to be > 'alliteration', which he remembered himself after throwing a snit > because the help he had asked me for was in some way > unsatisfactory. The > point being, Google didn't lead him to the answer, but a > targeted search > from an appropriate site might have), and regretting that he > won't even > try Firefox, where he could just change the search engine to > thesaurus.com (or InterGlot Synonym NL), type the word and have the > specific search results he needed in many fewer steps. > > But to each his or her own. I like efficency, and the ability to > customize the search box helps me gain more efficiency in my searches. > > Holly > -- > gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > > >
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