TvTropes search for Firefox

TV Tropes has its own search bar (powered by Google.) It's a great tool.

Firefox has a search box next to the address bar. There's a drop-down button that lets you pick a search engine. When you enter your search terms, the browser does the search on the engine you picked. It's possible to add and remove search engine options to and from the drop-down list. It's a great tool.

So, I was wondering if we could somehow have the option to add the TV Tropes search bar to the search options in Firefox.

Does anyone know how it's done, or where to look for instructions?

There is apparently a function in the dropdown, but the addon here is slow, wait...

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/add-to-search-bar/ is what I can find. No idea how to get on from there. It works for English Wikipedia, but nothing here.

edited 13th Aug '12 2:16:30 PM by SeptimusHeap

I'll look into it tomorrow - IIRC, build a search engine add-on for firefox isn't that hard.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-to-search-bar/

Here's the above plugin page in English, for those who don't speak that moon language from up there.

Also, after using the search box once in Chrome, you can search right from the Omnibar by typing "TV Tropes <query goes here>", and clicking the "Search tvtropes.org for <query goes here>."

edited 13th Aug '12 2:29:50 PM by VmKid

That addon is something the individual user does, though.

I didn't install anything to make Chrome recognize Wikipedia's search engine; it just happens automatically when I enter a search term while I'm browsing Wikipedia.

I don't think we want a TV Tropes site search to be sitting in there with Google and Bing as core search engines. We just want it to be recognized as a site-specific engine.

Hmm, that does work in Chrome.

edited 13th Aug '12 2:31:40 PM by Fighteer

^^It's called German, dude. Seems I didn't notice the language there.

Sites like You Tube have a pretty handy way of offering their search engine. When you're on You Tube and you open the drop-down list of search engines, the last option is "add You Tube search" (That's how I got Wikipedia in 2 languages and You Tube into my search engines list.)

If our search could be added to Firefox like that, it'd be a great help for our Firefox users.

edited 13th Aug '12 2:37:36 PM by BestOf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xECUrlnXCqk

I'm working on a searchplugin. For some reason, the addon doesn't save it along with the other Search Plugins (in C:Program Files(x86)Mozilla Firefoxsearchplugins), so I'll either have to just write the XML myself or find where the plugin puts it.

EDIT: Found it. Now to see how distribution will work...

edited 13th Aug '12 2:44:55 PM by VmKid

I don't have access to Firefox at the moment, but where ever you can add the search engines, you'd simply have to add www.google.com/search?q=site:tvtropes.org+SearchTermHere or whatever variable instead they want for your input.

Okay, a few things:

1. I wasn't able to submit the XML to Firefox's plugin repositories. The generated script doesn't appear to meet some sort of strange standard, so before we can send it there, much tweaking will need to be done.

2. Firefox users, try clicking this to see the XML. I'm gonna see if I can set up a page to automagically install the plugin.

EDIT:Okay, Firefox users, go to http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15862457/test_mycroft.html and open the search menu. You should see an option to add TV Tropes as a Search engine.

If Eddie is willing to tinker with the code of the site, there's a small snippet of HTML that can be put into the header to add this functionality. Here it be.

edited 13th Aug '12 3:18:24 PM by VmKid

Okay, turns out one does not simply walk into Mordor add a search engine to Firefox manually, only with plug-ins, which is surprisingly stupid.

Seems to work, to me.

Works fine. Thanks.

It works for me, thanks.

Works here, with Debian Iceweasel (a non-trademark-restricted version of Firefox) on GNU/Linux. That should clear up any suspicions about portability issues. ;)

Is that milk float driven by one Mr Soak, by any chance?

Nope, it's Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman. Who's not as awesome as Mr. Soak, but still pretty awesome. :)

edited 13th Aug '12 5:27:44 PM by Xtifr

Great.

Now it's only a matter of Eddie adding it to the page headers, which I would imagine would be a bit lower priority.

Also, if Eddie wants to mirror that XML to the TV Tropes servers, he can and probably should. It'd probably be better than grabbing it off of my Dropbox.

edited 13th Aug '12 6:33:57 PM by VmKid

Is this still wanted?

If I had to guess, I'd say: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=40616&type=wl.

OK, closing here then.