Re: [tlug] Tip 'o the Day: quick searches in Mozilla / Firefox

[Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com>]

On 09/02/06, Alain Hoang <hoanga@example.com> wrote:

>     On a side note, how do you DELETE added search engines?
> I just tried searching through all the options from Tools->Options
> as well as try clicking on the pulldown bar in the Search Engines
> Textbox but I can't seem to find it.

What version of Firefox are you running?

1.5x: plugins that you install from say, Mycroft[1], are located in
the searchplugins/ directory in your profile. E.g. mine are here:

: jglover@example.com; find .mozilla/firefox/`egrep '^Path=.+jmglov'
.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini | cut -d= -f 2`/searchplugins
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/IMDB.png
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/IMDB.src
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/wikipedia.png
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/wikipedia.src
[...]
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/cambridgedict.png
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/cambridgedict.src
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/Gentoo_Pack.png
.mozilla/firefox/bcw8f2la.jmglov/searchplugins/Gentoo_Pack.src

Pre-packaged plugins (e.g. Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, etc.) live in the
searchplugins/ directory in your Firefox install dir:

: jglover@example.com; equery files mozilla-firefox | head -n 10
www-client/mozilla-firefox-1.5
* Contents of www-client/mozilla-firefox-1.5:
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/firefox
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/LICENSE
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/README.txt
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/TestGtkEmbed
: jglover@example.com; find /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/google.src
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/amazondotcom.src
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/google.gif
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/amazondotcom.png

As you can see, I have already pared mine down. :)

If you are running Firefox 1.0.x, all plugins should be in the Firefox
install area's searchplugins/ directory.

>     It seems I keep hitting these situations in Firefox where I expect
> a GUI to be able to do 'blub' and find nothing...

The Firefox GUI is a tricky beast, in that it is infinitely
expandable, themeable, and programable, but still aimed at your aunt
June. The preferences and actions that are exposed through the UI are
intentionally limited.

To get under the hood, just browse to:

about:config

You can do almost anything there, and what you cannot, just write an
extension to fix! ;)

Cheers,
Josh

[1] http://mycroft.mozdev.org/