Cybersearch Firefox Extension
I'm a huge fan of the Awesome Search, now Searchery, add-on for Firefox 3 which added the capability of performing Google searches in the Firefox 3 location bar. I loved it so much because it helped me get rid of the search bar in the main Firefox 3 toolbar which in turn gave me more space for other icons and menus in that toolbar.
I had some complaints however. The major one was that Amazon Search was included when using the add-on which was pretty useless to me and that there was not a way to add other search engines, say Wikipedia, Yahoo Search or even from my own website to the add-on.
Ryan from Cybernetnews seemed to have similar thoughts when he reviewed the add-on after finding it on my website. He went a step ahead however and wrote his own version of it that provides all the features that I missed in the original extension.
Cybersearch is the name of the add-on. It basically makes it possible to define keywords for searches that are then displayed directly in the Firefox 3 location bar. It comes installed with a few defined ones like Google and Wikipedia but it is not a problem to change the existing ones or add new keyword searches.
It is furthermore possible to add searches that search multiple websites at once. Ryan added Lifehacker, Download Squad and his website to the keyword techy. I feel a bit bad that he did not add my site as well. Ryan if you hear that please add my site to it ;)
To perform a search one would simply write "techy keyword" in the location bar, say "techy firefox 3" for results about firefox 3 on those three websites. It's not a problem to add another site manually to it though.
The system is pretty flexible but makes use of (only) Google services from what I can tell. Sites like Wikipedia are searched using Google instead of the site search. If my vote would count for a change I would say that Ryan should at least add the two other major search engines (Yahoo and Life) to it. I prefer to have multiple options there.
The "Enable Keywords" box has to be checked after installing the Firefox 3 add-on before keyword searches can be performed. Wonderful add-on, pretty stable for a first release as well. Well done Ryan.
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Arvin the difference is that the “normal” keyword search opens a search result page in the tab while the extension opens them in the location bar.
Why not just use search keywords in the location bar, and install however many search engines you want in there? I think I’ve got around 10 different ones I’m using, from google, to wikipedia, to imdb, to urban dictionary and acronymfinder
Hey Martin!
Thanks for the review on the extension. It does currently use only Google to do the searches, but I will have to check out Yahoo’s SDK for a future version. The next thing I’ll probably work on though would be getting other languages in there.