Closed Bug 213822 Opened 21 years ago Closed 21 years ago

clean up the search stuff, point to google.com, remove lxr and bugzilla, add in other popular sites

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: Search, defect)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
Search
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 225490

People

(Reporter: sspitzer, Assigned: asa)

References

Details

Attachments

(1 file, 2 obsolete files)

patch to remove lxr, bugzilla, mozilla.org, dmoz and netscape search.
3.87 KB, patch
Details | Diff | Splinter Review 
clean up the search stuff, point to google.com, remove lxr and bugzilla

mozilla is for end users.  so let's

a)  set the default url for the search toolbar button to be "google.com"
(currently, info.netscape.com)
b)  clean up the search engines, remove netscape.com, lxr, and bugzilla under
Edit | Preferences | Navigator | Internet Search.  I think google and dmoz.org
are enough.  any others?
My two cents: having a "click here to get more search engine plugins" link right
there in the pref panel would be cool, too.  Makes it obvious to end users and all.

Just a note that unlike what's proposed here, there's a bug to remove dmoz from
the Firebird search. Wondering if Firebird and Seamonkey should be consistent or
not about offering dmox as a search option.  Bug 213942.
asa, I think we should clean this up for 1.4.1
Flags: blocking1.4.x?
I think we should remove bugzilla, lxr, mozilla.org, and netscape search (and
dmoz.org, if that makes sense, not sure), and add askjeeves and other popular
sites that end users want.
Summary: clean up the search stuff, point to google.com, remove lxr and bugzilla → clean up the search stuff, point to google.com, remove lxr and bugzilla, add in other popular sites
Every thing should go except for Google, and be replaced with the most popular 3
to 5 search engines. 
asa and I did a little work on this tonight.  he's got a todo list started.

one thing we're both worried about is if we remove an engine, and it was the
user's default, what will happen?

> Every thing should go except for Google, 
> and be replaced with the most popular 3
> to 5 search engines. 

I agree.

according to http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156451, the
top 5 are:

google, yahoo!, msn, aol, ask jeeves.

are yahoo! and aol powered by google?  if so, is that redundant?
note to asa, I've checked in the ask jeeves stuff.

mozilla/xpfe/components/search/datasets/jeeves.gif 
mozilla/xpfe/components/search/datasets/jeeves.src
Seth - Yahoo bought out Inktomi and I believe is using their algorithms
exclusively, and AOL is definitely powered by Google...
"one thing we're both worried about is if we remove an engine, and it was the
user's default, what will happen?"

I Forgot about this. I ran into it putting togather a branded Mozilla for a
client that didn't want Netscape Search included.

If Showsearch is true a "ghost" search box about 4 pixels high will appear below
the URL Field. The box will contain nothing.

If the Search button is clicked nothing will happen.

Most of the people who will have trouble will be the type of user who never
changes a default setting and who therefore has Netscape Search as thier
default. It may be a good idea to leave Netscape Search in for backwards
compatability.

The Mozilla.org, Bugzilla, and LXR options are something that only developers
are likely to select and they should be able to figure out that that they need
to change thier settings.

Dmoz? I'm not sure if it worth worrying about. It's usefulness is so limited
that I can't imigine too many people leaving it as thier default search after
trying it.


"are yahoo! and aol powered by google?  if so, is that redundant?"

Not from an endusers viewpoint. Many will view it as "I allways use AOL search".

The Main reason that AOL and MSN search are popular is they are the defaults in
the AOL and IE, and are used by the kind of user who never changes a default
setting, So I'm not sure just how popular they will be with people who are
attempting to change thier settings. I would say have them as options to make
Mozilla more user friendly to the people who have gotten used to them in case
they ever get brave enough to try setting preferances, or they have a friend
setting up Mozilla for them.


Jag, I'm struggling with this problem where removing Netscape search breaks the
search button and the context menu "Web search for 'foo'" menuitem. It seems
like it's still hanging on as the default search until a user actually switches
search engines one time in the sidebar or preferences (setting a new default).
Any idea what I'm missing? 
Seth, Julius says that bug 94651 may be a problem for the Ask Jeeves plugin. 
Comment on attachment 130142 [details] [diff] [review]
patch to remove lxr, bugzilla, mozilla.org and dmoz search

Seth, this doesn't remove Netscape search (I'm still trying to figure out how
we set some other engine as the default) but it does clean out the others. Can
you review this and then I'll land it and cvs remove these old plugins?
Attachment #130142 - Flags: review?(sspitzer)
This is probably not terribly important since internet keywords are defaulted
off in Seamonkey but for those that enable this in preferences, this patch
sends those queries to google rather than to Netscape's keyword server. See
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/internet-keywords.html for more
information about this feature.
Asa, have you looked at 
mozilla/ xpfe/ components/ search/ resources/ search-panel.js ?

Line 734 reads
          if (theID.indexOf("NetscapeSearch.src") != -1) {

I have changed this file to read google.src vice NetscapeSearch.src in addition
to removing Netscape and the other searchs except Dmoz from 
/profile/defaults/search.rdf and /xpfe/components/search/datasets/Makefile.in

This resulted in Google being the default search in a new profile. I haven't
tested this combination with older profiles however because I had allready
wipped the profiles directory.

asa, this is a good start.

we need to figure out what changes are necessary to handle it when the user's
default search has been removed.

my guess is we should start in nsInternetSearchService.cpp.

is rjc is still involved with mozilla?  if so, we should ping him.
I think I found it. One more change and it seems to make everything happy for
me. There are a few default settings in region.properties that I'd missed. Patch
coming up.
This patch removes the mozilla-specific plus redundant plugins leaving us with
Google as the default search and no secondary (until we hook up Ask Jeeves and
I think that either ebay or amazon plugin from mycroft.mozdev.org would be a
good addition too).  This patch also changes the internet keyword server from
Netscape to a simple google search. Internet keywords are off by default on
Mozilla and turning it on will now send non-URLs typed into the addressfield to
Google.
Attachment #130142 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #130143 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #130142 - Flags: review?(sspitzer)
Comment on attachment 130215 [details] [diff] [review]
patch to remove lxr, bugzilla, mozilla.org, dmoz and netscape search.

Seth, this seems to take care of the problem with setting the default to be
Google.
Attachment #130215 - Flags: review?(sspitzer)
It seems to be a truism that everyone on the internet has their own opinion(s) regarding search 
engines.  :^)

I think it is a great idea to bundle in support for as many search sites as possible... and not just 
search engines such as Google, but any site with search functionality.  As many probably know, 
just go to  http://mycroft.mozdev.org/  to find over 400 search plugins for various sites!

Along those lines, I do not understand why you would want to remove various search plugins such 
as "bugzilla.src".  Mozilla may "now be for end users" (whatever... it was before, of course), but the 
last time (today) I visited http://www.mozilla.org the site directly talks about asking people to test, 
find and report bugs.  Providing built-in support for bugzilla in a Mozilla product not only seems 
to be practical and useful, but logical.

In the end, with so many opinions regarding search functionality, I feel that the list of bundled 
search plugins should be an official decision made by the Mozilla Foundation and not left up for 
debate by developers.

---

Regarding "NetscapeSearch.src" in comment 15:  yes, I believe it was hacked into the JS that if the 
active search plugin could not be found for some reason (such as if different builds of Mozilla are 
used, each with its own unique list of search plugins), the browser would always default to 
something sane... which at the time was Netscape's search service.  Surprise... I don't mind seeing 
that change.  ;^P  [NSCP marketing... ugh.]

---

(As an aside, whatever ends up being done, don't forget when creating search plugins to add in 
support for update URLs so that as websites change their HTML, the plugins can automatically 
update.  Yes, it means that the search plugins also need to be hosted online, but really that 
shouldn't be a problem.  Check plugins into the build and also check them into the web site's CVS 
server.  Read "http://www.mozilla.org/projects/search/technical.html" for documentation.)
RJC, thanks for the comment. I agree with most of it. We should add more search
engines and I'm working with the Mycroft project to identify the most
popular/desired engines and hope to be adding more. I disagree that we should
include bugzilla and lxr searches. Millions of people are using Mozilla and if
even a fraction of them unknowingly set bugzilla as a default search engine then
our tool gets DOS'd. It's like the tinderbox sidebar; we're getting tens of
thousands of hits on that and surely those aren't developers trying to determine
if it's a good time to land a patch or pull a tree ;-)
Asa:  That is a reasonable argument... however, if bugzilla can be DOS'ed, it is an exploitable hole 
with or without having the bugzilla search engine installed, and a solution should be implemented 
on the server side.
We are turning Mozilla into an end user release, and as such developer stuff
should be removed.

Hopefully there will be mechanisms to easily put them back for developers :)

I for one don't want to explain "tinderbox" "bonsai" and "bugzilla" to my mom :)
There is a simple mechanism for adding mozilla-specific searches for developers.
Go to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html and search for "mozilla" and
you'll see at least half a dozen mozilla search plugins including rjc's
bugzilla, lxr and mozilla search plugins and over at
http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey/ there's a nice big link to add tinderbox
to your sidebar. 

There is no reason for hundreds of thousands, or millions of users to be
unintentionally hitting our developer tool servers. It doesn't help them and it
certainly doesn't help us. 
IT doesn't look like there is an easy way for users to remove search engines....
There's been a lot of consolidation in the search space and lots of
partnerships, so need to be careful not to be redundnat.  

- Yahoo owns Alta Vista and AlltheWeb (via Overture), Overture (formerly GoTo),
and Inktomi but is currently using Google as its back end and will likely switch
to Inktomi backend or something of Overtures.   
- Ask.com owns Teoma which is a nice Google-like search engine.
- Looksmart powers, MSN Search, HotBot and Lycos search and owns "Wisenut".  MSN
search will likely go out on its own.

Here's my quick suggestion for US domestic search defaults:
Google.com as default search engine
- AltaVista (people use it)
- AOL Search (people know it and use it, uses google back-end but does provide
different data)
- Ask.com 
- dmoz.org (top directory)
- MSN Search (let's play nice)
- *maybe* WiseNut or Lycos (new and relevant, good alt to google)
- Yahoo (because of it's directory, even though it uses google back-end) 

This should be enough for the current implementation.  Majority of users will
not change the google default setting. I also think we should NOT add site
specific searches (i.e. ebay, amazon) because there are already too many choices
above.  We also don't have the right implementation for those site-specific
search engines (unless we make advanced search in sidebar as default to expose
those engines). Ideally, we do a watson/sherlock type app to expose all these
search engines, but that can be an extension to firebird *hint, hint*. 
 


mkaply: using the file system it's easy, using mozilla you can't. being able to
remove a search thing would be its own bug.

asa: there are billions of sites on the web expecting anyone to be able to find
one needle for another haystack in an arbitrary unnamed place when they have no
reason to believe it exists at all is unreasonable.

i've asked justdave about hosting the webtools plugins on the webtools servers.
i expect we'll either host the plugins or link to something which hosts them.
that way people who visit bugzilla can find out about the bugzilla plugin.
Component: Browser-General → Search
Blocks: 218324
Flags: blocking1.5+
Flags: blocking1.4.2?
Flags: blocking1.4.1?
Flags: blocking1.4.1-
Asa,

+defaultSearchURL=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=
                          What does this do?   ^^^^^

If it forces the Google interface to English or tells Google to search only 
English pages, overriding the user's cookie preferences or Accept-Language 
setting, then we should probably remove it. It's not present in the 
browser.search.defaulturl property a little lower down in the file.
My 2cts: I agree with Malcolm, don't override any settings the user has already
entered into a search engine. Not everyone bothers to get a language pack and
some of them become available with a lot of lag. But, for instance, a Dutch
person might still want to see Dutch pages on a default install.
About the search engines: AOL is rarely used in Europe, AFAIK. Lycos is a little
more prominent. Nearly everyone uses Google or MSN anyway.
->default contacts
Assignee: asa → shliang
QA Contact: general → petersen
oops. ->me
Assignee: shliang → asa
We've run out of time and I wasn't able to figure out why this is problematic
for existing profiles.  Maybe for 1.6 :(
Flags: blocking1.5+ → blocking1.5-
Flags: blocking1.6b?
In what way is this problematic?  

The way I see it:

Users store their own search.rdf file in their profile.
Changing the default search.rdf won't hurt existing profiles. or does it?
Searchplugins aren't stored in the users directory, so they get overwritten anyway.
Having an existing profile with different engines does not put the new engines
in any category.
Having no existing profile the new engines would be placed in their respective
categories.

Is not having category placement on existing profiles considered a problem?

Users can simply place them in the categories they want to, if they so desire.

If we keep the existing plugins and add some new ones, how is this any different
than what we already have with exception of some additional engines?

Am I missing something?
See also bug 225490
Flags: blocking1.6b? → blocking1.6b+
Just a note:

lxr and bugzilla should be installable via either an XPI on the Mozilla.org
site, or via the "Developers Pack" option in the installer.

While Mozilla is an end user product, it should still be developer friendly. 
The ability to add them back quickly is important.

Perhaps it would be best to have 1 giant "Mozilla Developer XPI" with stuff for
beta testers.  Such as that tinderbox status icon, Debug menu's etc.... Just a
thought, but that's another bug.
OS: Windows 2000 → All
Hardware: PC → All

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 225490 ***
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago
Flags: blocking1.6b+
Flags: blocking1.4.2?
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
*** Bug 231271 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Attachment #130215 - Flags: review?(sspitzer)
Product: Core → SeaMonkey
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