Search Engines Plug in?

[gate1975mlm]

How about a search plug in?

Maybe a plug in where when you click it a little menu pops up letting you search lots of diffrent search engines and then it would open your browser.

[Xyzzy]

You can use Command line for that. You don't select engine from the list, but it would be slower anyway.

On the other side, Command line takes more space, so maybe create option to "buttonify" Command line, so that clicking button opens Command line.

X.

[Anam Cara]

Xyzzy Wrote:You can use Command line for that. You don't select engine from the list, but it would be slower anyway.

On the other side, Command line takes more space, so maybe create option to "buttonify" Command line, so that clicking button opens Command line.

X.

Or just edit the command line to be very small. Mine is just 80 pixels wide but that's more than enough room to see what I am typing. I've set alias G for google, GI for google image GG for Google groups et.c. IT makes me feel spoiled when I come to a machine that lacks the functionality :-).

[jkdclick]

Wow, never knew I can do that. Thank you.

[Damon]

Well, I'm going to resurrect an old thread, since this seems the best place to post my question.

How do I create a command string for a custom search engine, so that my search results will display automatically, instead of just displaying the search engine's home page. Looking at all the predefined search engine strings in the plugin doesn't tell me anything, since there's no common denominator from site to site.

For example: I want to create a custom search engine for Wikipedia....
I give it a name, create an alias, and enter

Code:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

in the URL box. But this obviously doesn't give me my search results that I've entered in the command line box...all it will do is display Wikipedia's homepage.

Can somebody please explain how I create the suffix needed to add to the URL, so that the search results display automatically?

Thanks

[Yuri Kobets]

Write this text into the URL textbox:

Code:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go

[Damon]

Thanks for the response Yuri. Your command string works perfectly. I'm starting to realize that unless I'm a coder (which I'm obviously not), there's probably no way to create my own custom strings for other various sites I might want to create, following some formula, is there?

I tried to create another custom string for a Google Image search:

Code:

http://images.google.com/

trying variations of your Wikipedia string, the strings in the presets, strings taken from the address bar of a manual google image search, reading the source code of manual searches, etc. All failed miserably.

Try not to laugh too hard at a small sample of my amateurish attempts:

Code:

http://images.google.com/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go

http://images.google.com/images?q=

http://images.google.com/imghp/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go

http://images.google.com/imghp/Search?search=%s&go=Go

http://images.google.com/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=ut

http://images.google.com/search?q=%s&ie=go

http://images.google.com/search?q=go

http://images.google.com/search?q=

http://images.google.com/search?q=/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=acadia&gbv=2

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=

http://images.google.com/imghp?hl=

http://images.google.com/imghp?hl=/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go

So....assuming there's no magic formula for creating my own command strings, would you please code this last one for me (Google Image search)?

Thanks for your time.
Cheers

[Yuri Kobets]

Well, it is very easy to create the urls for command line:
1) Open <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://images.google.com/">http://images.google.com/</a><!-- m -->
2) write some text in the search textbox and press enter (I've typed the "test")
3) Look at the text in the address box of the browser. After typing the test I get:

Code:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=test&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

4) Now we replace our text "test" with the placeholder %s:

Code:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%s&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

This is the url we are looking for

[Yuri Kobets]

This way works with most search engines including wikipedia. But with wikipedia you need to enter something unknown to get the query string in the address bar.

[Damon]

Thanks for the explanation Yuri. It's amazing how simple things can be when you know what you're doing...I wasn't aware of the placeholder concept.

Thanks for a great program & EXCELLENT support.

Cheers