This is interesting and gave me an idea for a project I have been working on.  Can anyone on the list point me to some Mozilla FireFox information for how to construct what the UI calls "sidebars", e.g., View->Sidebar.  It's not the same as a search plug-ins, but I'm looking for information of Sidebars and I also wouldn't mind some pointers to creating search plug-ins.

Thanks, Andy.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Walter Lewis
> Sent: 16 March, 2005 09:34
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] firefox search extension for OPACs?
>
> Kenneth R. Irwin wrote:
> > Unfortunately, I have not the first clue about how to go
> about doing that.
> > I would have thought that it would be easy to find a "make your own
> > search tool" link on the Mozilla website, but I can't find one.
>
> Here's an example of the search plugin that I adapted from
> one by James Day.
>
> The file has a ".src" extension and goes in the
> "searchplugins" folder withiin your Firefox install.
>
> The label that appears in Firefox is the name attribute of search.
> The icon is the updateIcon attribute of the Browser.  I got
> lazy with this one.  For something else I used the
> favicon.ico of the site (it's well sized for this)
>
> The key is that the form value supplied by the user is
> identified something like:
>         <input name="term" user="">
> In this case the external form you are supplanting is expecting the
> *user* to fill in the input field with the name "term".  The
> rest of the <input> values are simply things we need to
> supply to the form handling script so it won't break.
>
> I filled in the browser update* values with a URL to mozdev
> but frankly have only required that the referenced files be
> in the searchplugins folder.  At that point it just seems to work.
>
> Walter
>
> ====
> # Status: Working
> # Horizon Information Portal plugin for Mozilla # # By James
> Day, jday at cflc dot net # # Created: October 13, 2004 #
> Last updated: October 14, 2004 # Modified by Walter Lewis for
> HHPL: 15 Oct 2004 # # Note: Does a General Keyword search only.
>
> <search
> version="7.1"
> name="HHPL Catalogue (Keyword)"
> description="Halton Hills Public Library Catalogue Search"
> action="http://cat.hhpl.on.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp"
> searchForm="http://cat.hhpl.on.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp"
> method="GET"
>  >
>
> <input name="term" user="">
> <input type="hidden" name="menu" value="search"> <input
> type="hidden" name="aspect" value="basic_search"> <input
> type="hidden" name="sort" value=""> <input type="hidden"
> name="npp" value="20"> <input type="hidden" name="ipp"
> value="20"> <input type="hidden" name="profile" value="hhpl">
> <input type="hidden" name="index" value="GW">
>
> <input name="sourceid" value="Mozilla-search">
>
> <interpret
> resultListStart="<!-- RESULT LIST START -->"
> resultListEnd="<!-- RESULT LIST END -->"
> resultItemStart="<!-- RESULT ITEM START -->"
> resultItemEnd="<!-- RESULT ITEM END -->"
>  >
> </search>
>
> <browser
> update="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/plugins/HHPLkeywords.src"
> updateIcon="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/plugins/yahoo.gif"
> updateCheckDays="30"
>  >
>