Enhance Your Firefox : Custom Search Engine

Are you tired of using Firefox's default engine? Do you waana build your own search engine that searches through the site you want? You can search through other sites as well by installing a specific search engine add-in for that site to the Search Bar.So you can use Ask Jeeves or Lycos.

Se let's start with the hack. First click down the arrow next to G in the search box and choose Manage Search Engines. It will redirect you to Mozilla's Addon Site . This website contains a directory of search engines that you can use with you Firefox. You can navigate through the directory and select a search engine that suit's your need. Click "Add to Firefox" and there you go.

All that's well and good. But why settle for a search engine that's already been written? It's not that hard to write a plug-in of your own.

To create your own customized search engine, fire up notepad. You can name the document as the name of the site for which you are building the search engine but you should give the extension .src to the file. For this post, we will build search engine for Microsoft's Website so we will name it microsoft.src . Save it in the folder C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\.

Now put the following content in the document.

1 <search
2 version="9.0"
3 name="Microsoft"
4 description="Search www.microsoft.com"
5 action="http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx"
6 searchForm="http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx"
7 method="GET"
8 >

9 <input name="q" user="">

10 </images>

Now let me explain you bit by bit. The first line of the document is the standard syntax of the search plugin of Firefox. The second document states the latest version of Netscape. At the time of this writing, it is 9.0. Now, I know Firefox isn't Netscape, but both are based on common code, called Mozilla, and for reasons not quite understandable, you need to include the most current version number of Netscape. The third line states the name plugin name. The fourth line describe your plug-in.

Let me slow down from next line. The standard search form of Microsoft Website is http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx , so we use this site. To get this information about any website, go to the site for which you want to build a search engine. Do a search, and look at the first part of the resulting URL, the portion before the first question mark (?).

The sixth line we be the name of the site for which search form is being build. Underneath this line put the Get method syntax.

Now you need to add a line that tells the site's webmasters and site administrators someone is searching the site using the plug-in. That's what is stated in ninth line. This varies from site to site. Again, take a look at the URL that results after you search the site. Look for whatever falls between the first ampersand (&) and your search term. In tenth line close the search tag.

Now restart your Firefox, select your brand new customized search engine for Microsoft and start searching. Got any questions, you are most welcome.

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