Web users have two options to search for content on a specific website. They can either use the onsite search engine if available, or perform a search on a search engine like Google or Bing with the site:domainname parameter attached. Theoretically, the first option should provide better results as a search engine. Why? Because search engines usually do not have all pages of a website in their index, while the onsite search engine does. At least when it is any good.
The Firefox add-on SearchThisSite does not add a third search option to open websites in the browser. It instead optimizes the onsite search option by tapping right into the search engine offered on the site.
How is it done? The add-on tries to identify the onsite search offered by the website, so that the user can use the new search form in the Firefox interface to search the site.
The search results do not get better because of this, but the user saves some time whenever searching for something on websites. Instead of having to locate the search form manually, all that is needed is to enter the search phrase in the form in the Firefox interface to fire off the search.
The Firefox add-on is officially only compatible with Firefox 1.5 to 3.7. It does however work fine under Firefox 4 if compatibility is forced on the add-on.
The functionality cannot be used directly. The first step is to move the add-on interface element to one of the toolbars, the status bar or add-on bar. This is done by clicking on View > Toolbars > Customize which opens a Customize Toolbar window. Locate the Search this site element and drag and drop it to one of the toolbars of the browser.
In this example, the search this site form has been moved to the add-on bar of the browser from where it is easily accessible.
Search this Site is available at the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.
Search This site is compatible with a lot of different websites. It works for instance on WordPress blogs and many other sites. NoScript users may need to allow some scripts on the site’s they want to search if the searches are powered by scripts.
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Search Site bookmarklet is easier to setup.
http://marklets.com/Search+Site.aspx
Please please tell me which extension put the button “Tab groups” which I see in the first screenshot along some other available buttons (or maybe it is by default on FF 4.0?). Thanks.
Tab Groups is build into Firefox 4, it is linked to Panorama.