BytesWired

Just less than 1 month from the previous release (2.0.0.8), Mozilla release another update yesterday.

The latest release fixes some of the known issues found in previous release.

Not running on Firefox. Get your own copy now.

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Firefox extensions are really great tools to enhance your surfing experience and really save you a lot of time (or is it other way round?). There are lost of extensions available freely. Some works like a charm and some just not worth to try.If you are a blogger and rely much on advertisement on your blogs to survive (who doesn’t?!), there is one Firefox extension that your readers shouldn’t know about.

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Firefox browser allows user to install extension or add-on that adds more functionality than just a browser. Extension is a small software modules works like a plugin to enhance your browser. There are so many extension available for Firefox, from displaying weather forecast to spell checker, and more!

Everyone has their own favourite extension. Below are my 6 favourite Firefox extension (I do have more, but just keep it 6 at the moment ya) which I want to share with you.

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For the past articles, I have posted a few tutorials on how to tweak and change your browser settings (IE and Firefox) to suit your preference; including creating search engine plugins (for both IE and Firefox), and hacking address bar.

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I think most of us already know that when you type in anything on the address bar on Firefox address bar, it will automatically search the word using Google search engine.

Some of you probably hates Google so much (because they banned you for fraud clicking on Google Adsense) that you rather use other search engine. Maybe you a movie fanatic, and you mostly use IMDB to check out latest movie reviews or maybe you prefer Yahoo! and even MSN (unless you are working for Microsoft, I don’t know why would anyone use this).

Yes, I know you can create your own customized search engine plugin to handle it. If you do not know how to create search plugin for Firefox, I already posted one article on doing that here and here (for IE).

This tutorial will show you how to tweak the settings so that you can search right away from the address bar using your favorite search engine.

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These days, people are spending more time surfing online, be it for work, research, entertainment, downloading pirated movies or keeping in touch with friends and peers. It is undeniable that, today, for some, Internet is part of their lives or maybe it IS your life if you are making a living with it like Liew or Darren and many others.

This post, I compile a list of shortcut keys for both Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer that will enhance your surfing experience. Some shortcut keys are commonly known but you may some keys that you never thought it existed.

Read on to find out…

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Introduction

** Skip intro, just show me the code!! **

If you use Mozilla Firefox to browse website like I do, you will notice a search text box located on the top right of the browser. You can even customize which search engine you want to use from the search text box. By using search engine plugin, you can retrieve information faster and easier. One of the most frequently used search plugin is IMDB plugin. Whenever I want to know the any information on a particular movie, I just type in the movie title on the search box, select IMDB plugin, and hit enter key. The search will direct me to IMDB website and list out the movie detail or list all closest match movies title entered.

Likewise, you can have your own personalized search engine plugin that you may want to share with your readers. It is more efficient and faster for your readers to search for articles on your website by just using this method.

In this post, I will write a short tutorial in creating your own search engine plugin. Don’t worry if you have no prior programming skills. It’s pretty straightforward and can be done in less than 5 minutes.

The Codes

Below is the code snippet for my website search engine plugin. You can copy the code below and paste it in notepad.

** Please note that the code below only supports Firefox 2.0 or above and Internet Explorer 7 (IE7).

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">">
<ShortName>BytesWired</ShortName>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.byteswired.com">
<Param name="s" value="{searchTerms}"/>
</Url>
</OpenSearchDescription>

What you see above is the simplest form. You need following tags:

• OpenSearchDescription- You must to include <OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">.
• ShortName - The name of your search engine which will be display on the search box
• URL - The URL of your website/blog
• Param - The parameter(s) to include while searching on your website/blog.
  • {searchTerms} is the keyword referring to the text you entered on the search box.

For instance, my website is running on Wordpress platform. I know the full URL to perform search in my site is

http://www.byteswired.com?s={searchTerms}

where you replace {searchTerms} with any keywords you want to search. So, the param name need to be included is “s” as shown above. You should change the param name according to your website.

Once you are done with it, save the file as <filename>.xml. Replace <filename> with any name you want.

Installing New Search Engine Plugin

• Place the new file under the directory C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\ . Restart your Firefox browser (close all Firefox browser).

• Click on the search engine plugin available and you will see your new search engine plugin is now installed.

Extra

Apart from the tags mentioned above, there are other tags available such as:

• <InputEncoding> - default is UTF-8
• <Developer> - developer name
• <Image> - if you like to include a 16×16 icon beside the search text box

What’s Next

In next article, I will show you how you can do the same on IE 7. Plus, I will also show you how to tweak your registry to allow searching using keyword.

Share This

Try this out and let me know the outcome. If you have problem creating your own personalized search engine plugin, do not hesitate to drop me a line. Will try to help…