Closed Bug 32586 Opened 25 years ago Closed 25 years ago

Lack of search engines in Search

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: Search, defect, P3)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
Search
Platform:
x86
Linux
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: battery841, Assigned: blizzard)

References

Details

From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; N; Linux 2.2.12-20 i586; en-US; m14) BuildID: 2000032011 On the panel in the left, in the search tab, it displays the search engines like it should. But the list is VERY meager. It has ICQ, Compuserve, AOL, and Netscape. Even though I'm not a fan, where is Yahoo! Personally, I think that Google should be included in the list. I am a huge fan of Google due to how accurate I find it to be. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open up the left panel 2. Click on Search
I'm giving this to gable to annoy him and show him how many people want more search engines.
Assignee: matt → johng
*** Bug 32396 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
from bug 32396 (enh): put Google back in the list of search engines...
I am the reporter of 32936. My bug was similar, but was actually about the search engines in the Prefs. menu. It's really only a duplicate if there is a gloabal list since I hate the sidebar and never use it...
There is one and only one list of search engines.
yeah, and have you noticed how at least 5 out of 8 search engines are owned by netscape/AOL? CONSPIRACY!!!!!! FREE THE LIZARD!!!!!
i agree. it's a huge pain all over to have a useful functionality stripped out. There comes a point at which corporate interest is not served. (alright, calm down...ok ia m.. but u gotta fix this first :)
One problem seems to be that the search engine companies aren't going to guarantee that their HTML is formatted in any particular way. If Netscape distributes Sherlock plug-ins for search engine XYZ, and XYZ changes its HTML, then users will complain to Netscape. That's no reason not to put them in Mozilla, though. :-) If you're brave and want to try adding Google back into the list, see http://www.google.com/mozilla/google-search.html .. it's still a work in progress, though, and not everything works yet.
Looks good to me! :^)
Amit, can we add this back to the Mozilla search engine default list?
Here's a suggestion: Add a line of hyperlinked text that reads: "Why isn't my favorite search engine in this list?" to the following places: - the Prefrences dialog in the 'Internet Search' section - the Sidebar panel in the 'Search' tab - the 'Customize Search' dialog that is launched from Sidebar->Search->Customize... This text would link to a page on Mozilla.org (say, for example http: //www.mozilla.org/projects/search/technical.html) that gives technical information on how Search functionality is implemented in Mozilla, a HOWTO on adding new sites to the search bar / prefs dialog, links to bug reports that are germane to Searching, and links to pages on search engine sites describing their support for Mozilla (such as the Google link in the post by Amit above). Hopefully, adding a "Why isn't my favorite..." link would help answer this question (that many people seem to have), provide some direction for people who want to contribute, and hopefully cut down on the number of times this question gets asked on IRC/newsgroups, as well as duplicate bug reports sent to Bugzilla. Food for thought.
So I'm in the process of talking to higher-ups about Mozilla support. It's a thorny issue. The basic problem is that since the implementation picks out parts of the HTML, the HTML can't change a lot, or google.src will break. So if Google officially supports the Sherlock plug-in, either (1) Google's HTML is constrained or (2) Google needs to embed some special markers in the HTML for google.src to find. Google is going through a lot of UI changes so it's unlikely anyone here will agree to not change the HTML. Google also prides itself on having small, fast HTML, so it's unlikely many people here will agree to add special markers (which have to be added for everyone, not only Mozilla folk, unless we do some hackery with user-agents [1]). So we're left with google.src breaking occasionally. I'll continue talking to folk here about what we can do. Right now it's something I put up on my own, and as long as I can, I'll continue to update the google.src file when Google's HTML changes. However none of this is officially supported by Google. If Mozilla needs official support from Google before putting it into the search engine list, then I think it's unlikely (but still possible!) that it'll go in. On the other hand, if it's put in with the understanding that it might break (and of course I'll try to fix it within a few days), and it requires no official support from Google, then I don't think anyone at Google will object. - Amit [1] P.S. If we go for the user agent sniffing, should I look for "Gecko" or "Mozilla/5"?
We'll be adding support shortly for the "update" and "updateCheckDays" attributes... which should help you out of this problem area.
Amit, the Mozilla community is use to heavily variing quality, so nobody will kill you, if the sherlock file breaks. If you submit a new one in this case, that would be kind, but is no requirement, of course. I don't know anybpdy, who relies on Mozilla yet. As for the long term: Why no put up an extra page/CGI/whatever for Mozilla? This could be even leaner then. Of course, this requires work on your side. Your management has to decide, if it's worth that for them.
Okay, I've talked to various folk at Google and nobody has any objections to Google's Sherlock plug-in being included in Mozilla's default list. Yay!
reassigning to me
Assignee: johng → blizzard
google search source checked in. Thanks!
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 25 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
I realize that Google's been put back in, and that's great, but this bug was really initially about more than just Google. Where's the Yahoo!, the Infoseek, the altavista, the lycos, the GoTo.com, the webcrawler, the hotbot, the MSN search (kidding 'bout that last one)? Will these all be in the commercial builds?
We at Mozilla don't care about what ends up in the Commercial builds. If those search engines come to us and say that they want their search engines in Mozilla for testing then we will be happy to add them - just like google did.
yup, I figured as much :) on that note, verified
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Product: Core → SeaMonkey
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