348118 - ar Arabic Search Feature Tracking for Firefox 2

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: ar / Arabic, defect)

Description

[chris hofmann]

tracking bug to make sure we get things on the list below working correctly for
each locale:

Full Default Search partner list/order.
primary/secondary search selection behavior
Search codes.
Search Suggests enable/disable for locales where available or not

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Ayman, if you wouldn't have requests to add search plugins more useful or appropriate for Arabic users, we could close this bug out.

Comment 2

[Ayman Hourieh]

For search engines, I think having Google and Yahoo is OK, I can't think of better engines to include.

If Wikipedia is still part of the quick searches, does the Arabic version search in Arabic Wikipedia by default?

I also would like to disable search suggest by default, Google doesn't do any filtering on Arabic searches, and some Arabic letters yield not-so-interesting suggestions.

Thanks.

Comment 3

[chris hofmann]

notes from testing معرف البناء: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ar; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/2006082101 Firefox/2.0b2

Google
http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:ar:official&client=firefox-a
as mentioned search suggest is enabled but does seemed to return much content for arabic entries, and is planned to be removed for final.

Yahoo
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=mozilla+firefox&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2
search suggest also enabled, but didn't find andy arabic content returned in limited testing

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/s/103-9872877-2921428?ie=UTF8&tag=mozilla-20&index=blended&link%5Fcode=qs&field-keywords=test&sourceid=Mozilla-search
http://www.amazon.com/s/103-9872877-2921428?ie=UTF8&tag=mozilla-20&index=blended&link%5Fcode=qs&field-keywords=%3F%3F%3F%3F&sourceid=Mozilla-search
en-us site and content.  -- not much useful returned for arabic content search.. 

Answers
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=test&gwp=13
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=%D9%85%D8%B9%D8%B1%D9%81&gwp=13
en-us site and content - some arabic content returned on the second search -- tried "معرف"

CC
http://search.creativecommons.org/?q=test&sourceid=Mozilla-search
en-us site and content -- "critical error" message from the site on arabic content searches.  tried "معرف"

eBay
http://search.ebay.com/test_W0QQfrppZ50QQfsopZ1QQmaxrecordsreturnedZ300
en-us site and content - fail over to "all categories on some arabic content searches" tried "معرف"

Comment 4

[chris hofmann]

> For search engines, I think having Google and Yahoo is OK, I can't think of
> better engines to include.
>
> If Wikipedia is still part of the quick searches, does the Arabic version
> search in Arabic Wikipedia by default?

Ayman,

I spotted this 
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9
can you do a bit of testing to see if adding this site in the search list makes sense.

There are also a couple of Arabic specific search sites that turn up in Goolge and Yahoo queries for "Arabic Search Engines" but we might not have enough time to evaluate and get approval for those in Firefox 2.   It would be good to get your initial thoughts on a few of these.

Comment 5

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Mic, could you cross check google's suggest feature for Arabic with the google folks? Just to make sure that it's not an implementation glitch or something.

Comment 6

[Ayman Hourieh]

(In reply to comment #4)
> 
> Ayman,
> 
> I spotted this 
> http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9
> can you do a bit of testing to see if adding this site in the search list makes
> sense.
> 

I was talking about this, I prefer that Wikipedia search in Firefox uses the Arabic Wikipedia you linked it.

> There are also a couple of Arabic specific search sites that turn up in Goolge
> and Yahoo queries for "Arabic Search Engines" but we might not have enough time
> to evaluate and get approval for those in Firefox 2.   It would be good to get
> your initial thoughts on a few of these.
> 

Hmm, I really don't see a reason to use them, Google is prominent here, it has an Arabic interface, and everyone uses it, I'll look around anyway and see if there is a search engine worth adding.

Thanks for the effort.

Comment 7

[Mic Berman]

re comment #5
sure
/mic

Comment 8

[Joe Hughes]

Just FYI, Google doesn't have a specific Suggest corpus for Arabic--at best, you will get suggest results from previous Arabic searches performed on Google.com.

Comment 9

[chris hofmann]

sounds like we should try and add wikipedia.ar and turn off google search suggests.  can someone pull together a patch in the next couple of days?  lockdown for fx2 RC1 is next week.

Comment 10

[Ayman Hourieh]

(In reply to comment #9)

I did some greps but couldn't find what to patch, can somebody please point me to the right direction? I'll do it myself if no one else has time.

Thanks.

Comment 11

[Ayman Hourieh]

Attachment: Arabic Wikipedia Search Plugin

Based on DE version, tested and found to be working, please review.

Comment 12

[Ayman Hourieh]

Attachment: Disables Suggest

Assuming that removing auto-suggest URL disables the feauture.

Comment 13

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 238033 [details] [diff] [review]
Disables Suggest

Actually, you need to ...

- ensure that you have a current version of google.xml
- remove the suggest url (yep, that's right)
- add it as google-ar.xml to your locale
- adjust list.txt to actually pick it up.

Comment 14

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 238027 [details]
Arabic Wikipedia Search Plugin

Interesting, a wikipedia plugin that's not trivial. At least reading-wise.

Comment 15

[Ayman Hourieh]

Attachment: Disables Suggest

Comment 16

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 238064 [details]
Disables Suggest

You wanted to request that flag, right? Gonna dance with it a bit.

Comment 17

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 238064 [details]
Disables Suggest

Yes, plus the change to list.txt, and this is good.

Comment 18

[Ayman Hourieh]

(In reply to comment #16)
> (From update of attachment 238064 [details] [edit])
> You wanted to request that flag, right? Gonna dance with it a bit.
> 

I'm sorry I couldn't figure out what flag to set...

So is the Wikipedia one OK too?

Comment 19

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Yes.

Comment 20

[Ayman Hourieh]

Attachment: Updated list.txt (adds google-ar and wikipedia-ar)

Comment 21

[Ayman Hourieh]

One last thing, seems like original search plugins aren't needed anymore in the locale's profile directory, should I remove them?

Comment 22

[Ayman Hourieh]

(In reply to comment #21)
> One last thing, seems like original search plugins aren't needed anymore in the
> locale's profile directory, should I remove them?
> 

And by profile I mean searchplugins directory.

Comment 23

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

(In reply to comment #21)
> One last thing, seems like original search plugins aren't needed anymore in the
> locale's profile directory, should I remove them?

Any plugin that has the same name as an en-US one can be removed, and the list.txt looks good to me.

Comment 24

[Ayman Hourieh]

OK, I removed original search plugins, committed google-ar.xml and wikipedia-ar.xml, and updated list.txt.

Anything else before resolving this bug?

Comment 25

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

FIXED, please test all the searchplugins in a clean profile and VERIFY that they work as expected.