You know that nice little search bar up at the top right of the broswer? The one with google? How would you like to search the snopes.com mainsite using that? Well, I wanted to be able to do just that and I created a snopes search plugin.
You can get the self extracting archive here. Just run the exe and it should install to the necessary directory. - Just updated with the ULMB plugin.
Not to denounce the cretivity of Elbe's plugin effort, while more of a geek approach, the booklet can be used for any site.
Edited: to provide the correct bookmark to the instructions, not my Snopes implimentation.
Posts: 287 | From: Sacramento, CA | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I just tried that booklet thing, and I think I much prefer my method. I've gotten so used to using my quick search bar for all my searching needs.
How would you be able to add board search features, though? Are you able to design it to search every forum, in both the subject and entire post fields?
ETA: Out of curiosity, is there a key command that lets you scroll through the different search engines in the quick search bar?
-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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I have no clue how that Bookmarklet thing is supposed to work. The instructions just confused me.
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by I'mNotDedalus: How would you be able to add board search features, though? Are you able to design it to search every forum, in both the subject and entire post fields?
No, I don't think you can have it search all forums, unless you had it split out each group of results in seperate tabs. I was thinking that I could make an extension that adds a new toolbar that you can select your forum and then search. The hard part is figuring out how to make the toolbar.
quote:ETA: Out of curiosity, is there a key command that lets you scroll through the different search engines in the quick search bar?
I don't know of a way offhand. Pressing ctrl-k puts your curser in the search box, but I can't seem to get it to change search engines.
posted
I just hit the logo in the search bar and the other options become a drop down menu. Is that what you are talking about?
Posts: 2064 | From: New Brunswick, Canada | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Elbe: Pressing ctrl-k puts your curser in the search box, but I can't seem to get it to change search engines.
I just figured it out: hit ctrl-k, hold down, and you can scroll through them by pressing the up and down arrow keys (comes in handy with the Super DragAndGo extension).
-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Rhiandmoi, you have to restart firefox for it to show up.
Also: Yeah, a cross-forum search engine would be great. When I look for a thread I tend to use google with the addition of inurl:snopes.com. It's faster than trying all the possible forums.
Posts: 315 | From: Berlin, Germany | Registered: Mar 2005
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-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I think a board extension would be more difficult than I thought it would be. I think the PHP script is making calls I can't read in the source. If I can't see what's going on in the sourcecode, I can't work with it.
quote:Originally posted by Page Three: Also: Yeah, a cross-forum search engine would be great. When I look for a thread I tend to use google with the addition of inurl:snopes.com. It's faster than trying all the possible forums.
However, that is a good idea and I may be able to use it.
posted
On a related note, can you get it so that you can search different parts of the sites? So that I could, say, do a google picture search, or a Yahoo video search without having to do the search and then select the right button?
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Elbe: I'mNotDedalus: Up and down arrows just scroll through my various searches I've made, it doesn't change engines. Maybe it's different for some people.
Hmm...in your Privacy settings, do you have Firefox set to save information in forms and search bars? I don't; maybe that's the difference.
-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by trollface: On a related note, can you get it so that you can search different parts of the sites? So that I could, say, do a google picture search, or a Yahoo video search without having to do the search and then select the right button?
Not on snopes, there aren't any limited search options on the mainsite.
On say Google, you could change the search address to the one for images or videos instead of the standard one. If you want to take a look, open up an src file in notepad. Mine should be clean, but alot of the mozilla ones are messy.
quote:Originally posted by Elbe: I'mNotDedalus: Up and down arrows just scroll through my various searches I've made, it doesn't change engines. Maybe it's different for some people.
Hmm...in your Privacy settings, do you have Firefox set to save information in forms and search bars? I don't; maybe that's the difference.
I just turned it off, but it still doesn't scroll through it. Doesn't matter to me, though, I don't use the keyboard much in the browser.
Ok, thanks to Page Three's inspiration, I've created a ULMB search plugin too. It will search only on pages on msgboard.snopes.com on google. It may not always have really recent pages, though. I updated the links in the OP.
I may do some fine tuning on it, but it gives results.
quote:Originally posted by Elbe: I think a board extension would be more difficult than I thought it would be. I think the PHP script is making calls I can't read in the source. If I can't see what's going on in the sourcecode, I can't work with it.
It searches for the word "Zoo" in "automobiles". If you want to change the forum, you have to change the search_forum parameter according to this table
20 - Automobiles 21- Business
23 - College 38 - Computers 57 - Crime 24 - Critter Country 27 - Disney 30 - Entertainment 58 - Food 15 - Glurge Gallery 36 - History
25 - Horrors 26 - Humor 9 - Inboxer Rebellion 28 - Language 44 - Legal Affairs 35 - Medical 48 - Military 16 - NFBSK 42 - Old Wives' Tales
60 - Photo Gallery, etc etc
Actually there are many more. Rather than typing it out you can look it up yourself from the HTML of the search page. View the page source of the search page, and scroll about 2/3 of the way down. You will see the HTML for the drop-down
-------------------- Nico Sasha In between my father's fields;And the citadels of the rule; Lies a no-man's land which I must cross; To find my stolen jewel. Posts: 4912 | From: VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I saw all the options in the source, but I didn't see anything that put them together, or what the link was to run the search. But thanks, I'll keep that link in mind if I get working on my first idea.
quote:Originally posted by Elbe: I'mNotDedalus: Up and down arrows just scroll through my various searches I've made, it doesn't change engines. Maybe it's different for some people.
Hmm...in your Privacy settings, do you have Firefox set to save information in forms and search bars? I don't; maybe that's the difference.
I just turned it off, but it still doesn't scroll through it. Doesn't matter to me, though, I don't use the keyboard much in the browser.
I may not be clear on this, but when I hold down Ctrl+k AND use the up/down arrows, it scrolls through the engines. If I just use the arrows, I get searches. Is there a communication disconnect, or did you try both ways and it's still not working?
quote:Originally posted by Elbe: I saw all the options in the source, but I didn't see anything that put them together, or what the link was to run the search. But thanks, I'll keep that link in mind if I get working on my first idea.
There is no link. All the input boxes and drop-downs are inside a Form tag The form has an action parameter that contains an URL to the PHP script. When you hit the Search button, the browser collects all the data from the Input and select boxes and sends it to the PHP script specified in the action parameter.
The URL that I gave you does the same thing, except that it's a "Get" request instead of "Post". You don't have to be worried about the type of request though, because the ULMB search doesn't have too much data.
-------------------- Nico Sasha In between my father's fields;And the citadels of the rule; Lies a no-man's land which I must cross; To find my stolen jewel. Posts: 4912 | From: VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Probably a good indication that I should learn what the heck I'm doing. I just have some skill in reading code and emulating what others have done.
quote:Originally posted by Elbe: Probably a good indication that I should learn what the heck I'm doing. I just have some skill in reading code and emulating what others have done.
Don't fret, Elbe. You have done much more than I can. I had been thinking about a snopes search plugin since a year ago, but never got round to learning how to write a plugin. I was thinking more on the lines of doing something like DictionarySearch extension:- you can select a word and right click and it will give you an option "Search on snopes.com". I like your idea better, though. I remember I tried reading up on Firefox extensions a few months ago, but I gave up.
-------------------- Nico Sasha In between my father's fields;And the citadels of the rule; Lies a no-man's land which I must cross; To find my stolen jewel. Posts: 4912 | From: VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
The extensions are written in javascript, and a little complicated - but I'm making some progress. The search plugins look to be just html and after comparing several others I opened it seemed pretty simple.
posted
So, can you have any javascript? Are there any limitations? If you can make any javascript calls, you can let the user input the search criteria as :in. You can use javascript to parse out the forum name and the search word, and then use the URL that I gave you.
-------------------- Nico Sasha In between my father's fields;And the citadels of the rule; Lies a no-man's land which I must cross; To find my stolen jewel. Posts: 4912 | From: VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Yeah, since the extensions use javascript they are pretty versitile, but I'm not all that familier with it.
The search plugins just make the url call, you tell it what search address to call and you tell it what variables to attach to the url.
I was upset I couldn't attach anything to the input. Like if "q=" is the keyword variable and "user" tells it to use whatever was typed in, I couldn't have it do something like 'q= "search this" + user'.
posted
Umm, nothing's wrong with it. I just like being able to search from the browser without having to open a new page first. I guess it's just me being lazy.
quote:Originally posted by Elbe: Yeah, since the extensions use javascript they are pretty versitile, but I'm not all that familier with it.
The search plugins just make the url call, you tell it what search address to call and you tell it what variables to attach to the url.
I was upset I couldn't attach anything to the input. Like if "q=" is the keyword variable and "user" tells it to use whatever was typed in, I couldn't have it do something like 'q= "search this" + user'.
Can you include "searchthis"+user into another variable, and attach that variable to the url?
If you want I can have a look at it. I'm good with javascript
-------------------- Nico Sasha In between my father's fields;And the citadels of the rule; Lies a no-man's land which I must cross; To find my stolen jewel. Posts: 4912 | From: VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I tried, it didn't seem to want me to create new variables. There may have been a way to do it that I didn't see, but I stopped trying after I found I could use the "sitesearch=" variable for a google search.
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I had been thinking about a snopes search plugin since a year ago, but never got round to learning how to write a plugin. I was thinking more on the lines of doing something like DictionarySearch extension:- you can select a word and right click and it will give you an option "Search on snopes.com". I like your idea better, though. I remember I tried reading up on Firefox extensions a few months ago, but I gave up.![[Confused]](confused.gif)
