Firefox Search Plugin

[eviljohn2]

Hi Stuart or anyone else that knows about this stuff,

I'm trying to write an AVF Search Plugin to use in Firefox and I'm almost there but seem to have hit a spot of trouble in that the code won't actually run the search but stays on the "Search Forums" page with the Key Word field filled in with the word entered into the browser search bar.

Code is this:
# Basic Search Plug-in for AVForums.com (http://www.avforums.com)
# by John Gibson (eviljohn2) created: 04 June 2005

version = "7.1"
name="AVForums.com
description="AVForums Search"
method="GET"
action="http://www.avforums.com/forums/search.php?"
>








It's about as basic as these things can be written but I still can't get it to work. On the plus side I do have a rather spiffing AVF logo on the search engine drop-down menu now.

[Stuart Wright]

John, see this :
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107955

[eviljohn2]

Thanks Stuart, I'll try and have a go later in the week. Would you be interested in me sending you the code to upload onto the site for others to use if I can make it work?

[eviljohn2]

Got it thanks Stu! It was only the ? in .php? that was causing it to stall as that seems to get put in on it's own anyway.

Add another one to the list who's learnt exciting new things about Firefox!

EDIT:
I've attached the plugin to this post, for anyone that wants to use it just unzip it to:
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins
folder (or wherever you've installed Firefox too).
Upon restarting Firefox you should have an additional search option on the drop-down menu in the search box.

[Stuart Wright]

Works nicely, John.
What are the specs for the png file? I want to look at creating a larger one if possible.

[eviljohn2]

As far as I know it has to be 16x16 pixels. I just shrunk the one you provide on the "About Us" page using Fast Stone.

EDIT:
Yup, 16x16 with no exceptions.
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/deepdocs/i....html#creating

Maybe a .jpg or .gif would give better results than the .png that I created?

I've just looked at the order that the icons are searched for and it would probably be best to make it a .gif

[Stuart Wright]

John - that's great.
I have removed your original attachment as I want to make a few tweaks to it.
I'll keep your credit in there when I publish it on the home page shortly.
Thanks

[eviljohn2]

My pleasure Stuart, I've noticed that I forgot to include the "UK's best" bit in the blurb at the bottom.

If you want to officially support it then you can add code to it which automatically checks for updates and it may be worth submitting it to Mycroft. There is plenty of excellent help on that site which includes how to make it properly installable from a server which may be a better option than the .zip.

[eviljohn2]

I'm not quite sure where to put this so here will have to do...

Following on from the plugin I've found out how to order the items within the search menu (along the way I did have a lot of trouble with Invalid Page Faults in kernel32 but being great I managed to fix that - who needs to do revision anyway?)

Type about:config into your Firefox address bar.

Filter for browser.search.order.

Add the strings you need in the order you want them (see screenshot). You need to actually use the function NAME as it appears in your browsers list rather than the .src filename. You will need to run the filter again to update the list.

Restart instances of Firefox and voila.
The eagle-eyed will also notice that I've been into the /searchplugins file and deleted the *.src and *.png files that I don't want in the list. I've also edited one of the Google search plugins to perform a UK only search (unfortunately my editing of the icon hasn't come out too well yet. )

Perhaps we should start a Firefox advice thread? I've found loads of useful plugins and extensions.

[Mr Incredible]

Is there any advice on how to get the plugin working under FF2?

Thanks.

[Mr Incredible]

To answer my own question, it appears FF2 install could not convert the .src to a .xml which apears to be the new method for defining a search engine and promptly dleted the src and gif files from the searchplugins directory. However, on downloading the src and gif again from this thread and reinserting into the searchplugin folder, it appears to be working fine. +