308119 - SEARCH engines do not work well

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 253457

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[Igor Furlan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050910 Firefox/1.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050910 Firefox/1.4

User can select from Bookmarks--> Quick Searhes 5 different search engines.
Unfortunately, they do not work well. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
GOOGLE:
--- works OK. User gets on the screen a standard GOOGLE searh page
    http://www.google.com/webhp
    
ANSWERS.COM:
Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
http://www.answers.com/%s

STOCK SYMBOL QUICK SEARCH:
http://www.google.com/search?q=stocks:%s
Invalid Ticker Symbol
'%s' is not a valid ticker symbol.

WIKIPEDIA QUCKSEARCH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%25s
User ends up on the MAIN WIKIPEDIA page. Is this OK ??  I do not know.

URBAN DICTIONARY
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%s
1. %s 
Format code tag that literally means "Replace this by a string of characters".
Orinigally introduced in the C programming language as a format specifier for
the printf function, it was later adopted by a plethora of other languages such
as java, ruby, etc.
In C:

name = (char *)"Danny Boy";
printf("Hello '%s'.",name);

Produces;

Hello Danny boy.

Syntax is almost identical in any other language that implements printf.
Source: Grijando, Dec 2, 2004

2. %s
What you get when you click the Urban Dictionary quick search found in the
firefox bookmarks. Check out your bookmark manager, and it'll tell you how to
use it, They are just pointing it out to you. If you type "slang " and then
whatever you want after the space, it will search that in urban dictionary.
Type into the address bar "slang whut" does not work in Internet explorer.
Source: Scott, Nov 6, 2004

3. %s
%s is what appears when you click on the Urban Dictionary link in Mozilla Firefox.

This is because it's a special type of bookmark which lets you type the word
"slang" followed by a slang term, and it will automatically look it up for you
in this fine dictionary.

You can also use the words "google" (google), dict (dictionary.com), "wp"
(wikipedia), and quote (stock market prices).
slang wibble
wp fourier series
google something
Source: Physics Dave, Dec 1, 2004
4. %s 	link send redefine 104 up, 68 down
What you get when you click on Urban Dictionary in Quick Searches in
Firefox bookmarks...
Oh just type "slang something" in the address bar and quit moaning...
Source: RobL, Nov 27, 2004
5. %s 	link send redefine 49 up, 76 down
1)In typing and typeset the symbol in question is the percent sign and when
followed by lower case s, as if attached, indicates that it represents multiple
percents
$s divided hours equals what %s?




Most of the search outputs are just bogus ( useless )

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050911
Firefox/1.4 ID:2005091107

Tried searches for the term "workaround" on a recent branch build.
All 6 search engines gave good results.

Comment 2

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

These are smart keyword searches:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/smart-keywords

You must type the keyword followed by your search term in the address bar.

Duping this to somethign that would make the behaviour more sensible.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 253457 ***

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

They all WFM.

Comment 4

[Igor Furlan]

I wi(In reply to comment #2)
> These are smart keyword searches:
> http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/smart-keywords
> 
> You must type the keyword followed by your search term in the address bar.
> 
> Duping this to somethign that would make the behaviour more sensible.
> 
> *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 253457 ***

Yes, I did as you've suggested. To bi more precise I did the following:

A)closed ALL FF1.5 instances on RH8.0
B) started new FF session
C) typed "rtfm" ( without quotes ) into the address bar (URL address field)
D) clicked with a mouse on Bookmarks --> Quick Searches and selected Urban
Dictionary

The FF1.5 went to that site with the following URL address:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%s

I got on the screen 4-5 definitions of the string "%s". In other words,
the string "%s" was NOT replaced with the string "rtfm" and, of course, the
search engine did NOT produce the adequate result

So, what am I doing wrong ? How should I use the other search engines selected
through Bookmarks --> Quick Searches path ?

My understanding is that this bug os NOT a duplicate of the 253457, because I am
not talking here about keyword searches.

Is there a description how to use the search engines selected through Bookmarks
--> Quick Searches path ?

Comment 5

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Clicking Bookmarks > Select Quick Searches > Rightclick on one of the bookmarks
e.g. anwers.com > choose Properties. In the Keyword field you see the word
"dict". So "dict" is the keyword for Answers.com.
To perform a search, e.g. for the word "workaround" you type in the locationbar:
"dict workaround" (without the quotes) and hit Enter.

Comment 6

[Uri Bernstein]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Yes, I did as you've suggested. To bi more precise I did the following:
> ....

What you did is not how you're supposed to use the "quick searches" bbokmarks.

> So, what am I doing wrong ? How should I use the other search engines selected
> through Bookmarks --> Quick Searches path ?

See comment #5.

> 
> My understanding is that this bug os NOT a duplicate of the 253457, because I am
> not talking here about keyword searches.

Yes you are. The "Quick Searches" bookmarks are keyword searches. Therefore this
is a duplicate.

----

All of this is not to say that the keyword searches UI doesn't suck. It does.
badly. I can't imagine how anybody would discover how to use them correctly
without help. But this issue is discussed in other bugs (such as bug 253457 and
bug 261175).

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 253457 ***