403742 - Trouble with ask.com search plugin

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Search Plugins, defect)

Description

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

I got a request from the product manager at ask.com to update their plugin. I uploaded their latest, approved it thru the editor's panel and thought I did it correctly and was able to verify it from Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Minefield, earlier today (3PM PST).

Now (11PM PST) when I try it from home with Firefox 2009), I get the following error:

Firefox could not download the plugin from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/20950/ask.com.src

Can someone please take a look at this since we now have a broken plugin on the search page?

Thanks.

Comment 1

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

I just tried it with 2.0.0.8, both logged in and not, and it worked fine.

Comment 2

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

When trying from Minefield as a not-logged-in user, I get:
Download Error
Minefield could not download the search plugin from:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/20950/ask.com.src

Comment 3

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

The search engine they sent us is an OpenSearch (.xml) format. It looks like it was renamed to .src, which is an entirely different format and Firefox is getting confused I think.

Comment 4

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Basil mentioned something earlier about not being able to rename the file when uploading a new version

Comment 5

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

I was able to upload the file as .xml. But we apparently hardcoded the install function to append .src to the end of the download url, which is what the install trigger looks at.

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Yeah, files with the "src" extension will be detected as Sherlock files, and we'll fail to install them (see http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/browser/components/sidebar/src/nsSidebar.js#173 ) AMO could start supporting OpenSearch engines by not hardcoding "src" and sending "xml" or "src" as needed (the "icon" parameter to window.sidebar.addSearchEngine will also be ignored if the OpenSearch file includes an <Image> tag, as that Ask.com plugin does, but specifying it in the call shouldn't hurt).

OpenSearch isn't supported by Firefox 1.5 or lower, though. Note that I did write a OpenSearch->Sherlock converter component for remora a while ago (http://svn.mozilla.org/addons/trunk/site/app/controllers/components/opensearch.php) because there were plans to use it, I don't know what happened to those plans :)

Comment 7

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

We've mentioned allowing people to submit their own search engines and treating them like a normal add-on category, in which case we'd definitely use the converter. Not sure why we had you make it originally!

I moved the ask.com search engine to the sandbox until this is fixed. (With search engines, we can't revert back to an older version with the same filename)

Comment 8

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

So, gavin confirms that .xml OpenSearch files will not install in Firefox 1.5. So, we can undertake a pretty large project of converting all OpenSearch to Sherlock and distributing the correct one based on client-side JS (Firefox 1.5 won't install OpenSearch) or we can drop support for Firefox 1.5 as it's no longer supported.

Urchin shows that 0.53% of our sessions this week were from 1.5.0.12, and even then I have to wonder how many would care if only certain search engines (right now only ask.com) were missing.

Comment 9

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

Dropping support for an unsupported product (Fx 1.5) seems the natural decision.

Comment 10

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

An error appears on that page when the user doesn't have JS enabled.  We could put an error for FF1.5 and below as well.

Comment 11

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

Why was I under the impression that this was getting fixed in yesterday's push. Can we get this taken care of please?

Comment 12

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

I'm getting ping'ed by ask about why we removed their search plugin - can we please get it back on?

Thanks.

Comment 13

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

Let's put the old one up and spin off a separate bug for opensearch support and phasing out ff1.5 .src stuff.

Comment 14

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

I filed 404373 for the larger issue and we're working on reverting to the old .src in the meantime.

Comment 15

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

I tried uploading the old .src several times but couldn't get it to overwrite the bad one, even by renaming it.

I can't tell if this is related to the bad db slave, the mirror issues we're having, or a code problem. So if it's not working soon, I'll have IT manually replace the file.

Comment 16

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Ha, my problem was being caused by the bad db slave.

The old engine is now back up and working.