Mozilla search plugins
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Mozilla search plugins
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Speaking of cool features, I've been meaning to mention Mycroft, a collection of search plugins for the Mozilla toolbar. These plugins work like Huevos, and a bunch of other doodads, so there's really nothing new here, but it's handy to be able to extend the browsers integrated search toolbar.
The screenshot shows Firebird with the standard set of plugins -- for Google, Google News, Amazon, and dmoz.org (Open Directory) -- plus a handful I've added. They're easy to make. As with Huevos and other tools, you just need to describe your search URL and parameterize the search term. For Mozilla, you also supply a 16x16 image to differentiate each plugin in the dropdown list. A simple description goes like this:
<search name="Jon's Radio" version="1.0" method="GET" action="http://search.atomz.com/search/"><br/>
<input name="sp-q" user> <br/>
<input name="sp-a" value="sp10022a3d"> <br/>
</search>
Here are the files for the plugins shown in the screenshot:
Google MS: src, img, install to Mozilla
InfoWorld: src, img, install to Mozilla
Jon's Radio: src, img, install to Mozilla
Safari Books Online: src, img, install to Mozilla
Switchboard: src, img, install to Mozilla
You put them into a searchplugins directory whose location is platform-dependant. Here on Mac OS X, with Firebird, it's /Applications/Mozilla Firebird.app/Contents/MacOS/searchplugins.
The Switchboard example is slightly gratuitous. You can't find anybody in Switchboard with a single search term, so just winds up being a quick way to launch Switchboard with the person's last name already filled in.
Nothing earthshattering, but certainly handy. Here's the Mycroft directory of search plugins.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/06/13.html#a721
