1019709 - [ff] Search engine setup for Firefox Mobile for Fulah.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: ff / Fulah, defect)

Description

[Jeff Beatty [:gueroJeff]]

We want to ship Firefox Mobile with a good list of search engines for Fulah. 

We're going to work towards this in three phases. First, the localization team and the l10n drivers will look at the market for the language and come up with a good set of search providers. Ibrahima, we'll need your input on this, the guidelines for making recommendations are on <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Productization_guide>. 

For en-US, we currently use this set, to which we can fall back in the case of lacking localized alternatives:

> Google (mobile version), Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, Twitter, Wikipedia (slightly different to desktop, 32x32 icon)

We may also want to go with just a subset of the en-US engines, if that's more appropriate for the local market.

Once we decide to use a particular search engine (and we test it on a mobile device), l10n drivers will contact the owner and ask for permission, and for specifics like proper search flags. Ibrahima, we'll likely need your help to at least get the contact information.

For search engines that we already ship with on desktop and that you would like to include in mobile as well, the permission is not needed.  Consider using a mobile version of the engine if one is available.  Also, please make yourself familiar with instructions regarding the <Description/> element at <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Integrated_Search_Instructions>. For mobile, we'll want 64x64 size images, too.

Once we have a specification on what the search engines for Fulah should look like, flod (Francesco Lodolo) and the localization team will work on an implementation on that. flod will create and attach patches for the desired changes and get them reviewed. After a successful review, flod will land them. Ibrahima, if you're interested, you could create the patches, too. You'd ask flod for review on those before landing. 

Please don't commit any modifications in browser/searchplugins to the hg repository without a patch reviewed by flod, Stas, Axel or someone else appointed by the l10n drivers. The data here is sensitive to users and our search partners, thus the extra care here.

The Fulah team and flod will be driving this bug to completion.

Comment 1

[Jeff Beatty [:gueroJeff]]

I believe there some productization is currently in the repo, but it would be good to review that before adding to maemo-locales. Additionally, we'd like to add Bing and Yahoo to the line up.

Comment 2

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

There's only a region.properties file (missing NetVibes compared to desktop), no searchplugins.

Desktop is shipping these searchplugins:

google
amazon-france
bing
wikipedia-fr
eBay-france
yahoo-france
cnrtl-tlfi-fr

To add cnrtl-tlfi-fr we need a 32px icon, and I can't find any from a quick search around.

Comment 3

[Ibrahima SARR]

Since Fulah is spoken in 19 countries, maybe we should add search engines with also .com (instead of just .fr which goes to French sites)
Google has also manu local domains like google.sn (Senegal) but I wonder if there is a limit to the number of search engines that are possible to add.

Comment 4

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

For Google we only add one searchplugin for .com, it will take care of redirects.
For the others, we should just pick one, right now we put a limit around 8 searchplugins.

Comment 5

[Ibrahima SARR]

Good to know, thank you.

Comment 6

[Jeff Beatty [:gueroJeff]]

So just to recap, Ibrahima, could you reach out to cnrtl-tlfi-fr to request a 32 px icon to use in Fulah Fennec please?

Would you prefer that all of the .fr sites become .com sites? Or are the .fr more appropriate?

Comment 7

[Ibrahima SARR]

I have never heard of "cnrtl-tlfi-fr" and I think it will not be useful to ad as a search Engine for Fulah.

About .com and .fr: It would be great if OS language can be detected and redirection to .fr happens automatically. I know in France .com is redirected to .fr but I don't know if it's OS or browser dependant.
Fulah is spoken both in French and English (Official languages) speaking countries.
So it all depends on the country but I don't know how that can be solved.
If no solution of auto-redirection, maybe default to .fr

Comment 8

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

(In reply to Ibrahima SARR from comment #7)
> I have never heard of "cnrtl-tlfi-fr" and I think it will not be useful to
> ad as a search Engine for Fulah.

You added it because it was shipped with French at the time...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=709129

Considering that only Google and Bing are able to do automatic redirects, the list would look like

google
amazon-france
bing
wikipedia-fr
eBay-france
yahoo-france

Does it look good to you? If so, I can go on and create a patch.

Comment 9

[Ibrahima SARR]

Sorry I did not add "cnrtl-tlfi-fr", it was just copied from French.

This is not perfect but it is OK. For examples Nigerians will land on Yahoo-France, which is not appropriate since they use English.
I have been looking for teams to make Firefox in specific locales (like ff_NG for Nigeria) as Fulah has many dialects (that would match search engine language naturally).

So you can go ahead for the patch.

Comment 10

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Attachment: bug1019709.patch

Used searchplugins shipping on mobile for French, plus Amazon with 32px icon.
region.properties: added NetVibes as in desktop.

Comment 11

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Landed on mozilla-aurora and pulled into l10n-central
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-aurora/ff/rev/453665fd3062
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/ff/rev/453665fd3062