Mini Mods - Search your forum Firefox 2/IE7

PART 1:

Create a file and name it ff_search.xml. Insert this code in to it:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>devpals.com</ShortName>
<Description>devpals, ask a question</Description>
<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">http://www.devpals.com/favicon.ico</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://www.devpals.com/search.php?do=process&amp;query={searchTerms}" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

The following changes need to be made to customize it to your site

<ShortName>[your board name]</ShortName>

<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">http://[your forum url]/favicon.ico</Image>

<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://[your forum url]/search.php?do=process&query={searchTerms}"/>

Any "special" characters that are in your forum name or description are going to have to be replaced.

Upload the file to your forum root.




PART 2:

Open up your headinclude and paste this in the last line (placing your URL where appropriate)

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="http://[your forum url]/ff_search.xml" title="[your forum title]" />

That's it. Now when you go to your forum with Firefox 2 (and I hear it works on IE7, though I haven't downloaded that yet) the little Google "G" in the search box should be glowing. If you click the down-arrow, there will be a new section that says "Add 'your forum'".

Select it and now you can search your forums directly from that box. This assumes you have no guest/captcha restrictions on searching. If not, it's only going to work for members.

You can see an example at http://www.devpals.com if you have Firefox 2 installed.

[FireFish]

Okay, I got it working after a few modifications; I edited the XML to:
1) Use a different icon (smaller)
2) removed '&' from description tag as I also thought it would be a problem.

Personally, I think #1 was the issue with it not working; I'm now using a 16x16 jpg icon vs. an ico file (I know ICO's work, but JPGs seemed to work for my case)

All said & done, it is a nice little hack.

I had a similar one written only for firefox & had my own installer for it to drop it into FireFox's searchplugin folder.

This works nicer, mainly b/c the biggest problem with the other FireFox addon mod out there is that it will NOT retain your login even if your browser has it remembered.

If you have hidden forums, this suck b/c the old hack wouldn't search them since you weren't considered logged in, even if it is set to remember your password.

However, I do not have that problem with this one which makes me happy.

With all of these code modifications, I wanted to show my version of the XML which is now working for me after modifying it many times. Here's the final working version:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Microwize User Forum</ShortName>
<Description>Anything Medisoft Lytec and Medinotes</Description>
<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">http://www.microwize.org/forum/icons/MicrowizeUserForum.jpg</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://www.microwize.org/forum/search.php?do=process&amp;query={searchTerms}" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

[Ramsesx]

I tried everything, even changed my ico to 16x16 but don't get it working.

[FireFish]

Originally Posted by Ramsesx

I tried everything, even changed my ico to 16x16 but don't get it working.

Here's what I did; I removed the icon code line:

<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">http://www.microwize.org/forum/icons/MicrowizeUserForum.jpg</Image>

& saw if it worked fine, which it finally did. Then, I tried it with the developer's icon (who wrote this mod) & it worked fine.

Then I tried it with the JPG I have above & finally, it worked fine WITH the icon.


Try it in steps to determine the problem.