442938 - [et] Search engine setup for Firefox 3 for Estonian.

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: et / Estonian, defect)

Description

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

We want to ship Firefox 3 a good list of search engines for Estonian. 

We're going to work towards this in three phases. First, the localization team and Mic (Michal Berman) will look at the market for the language and come up with a good set of search providers. Sander, we'll need your input on this, the guidelines for making recommendations are on http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_web_services_guidelines. 

For en-US, we currently use this set, to which we can fall back in the case of lacking localized alternatives:
Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers, CC, eBay, Wikipedia

After we decided on a particular search engine, Mic will contact the owner and ask for permission, and for specifics like proper search flags. undefined, we'll likely need your help to at least get the contact information.

Once we have a specification on what the searchengines for Estonian should look like, the localization team and Axel will work on an implementation on that. This should happen by the localization team creating and attaching patches for the desired changes, and requesting review from Axel. After a successful review, the localization team will land them.

Please don't commit any modifications in l10n/et/browser/searchplugins to the cvs repository without a patch reviewed by Axel or someone else appointed by Mic. The data here is sensitive to users and our search partners, thus the extra care here.

Comment 1

[Sander Lepik]

First position: www.google.ee - estonian version of google, probably the best option
Second position: www.neti.ee - one of the oldest in Estonia - [e-mail]
Third position: www.ee - [e-mail]

wikipedia should be replaced with et.wikipedia.org

and i think that's about all

Comment 2

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Sander, could you give us some background info on neti.ee and www.ee? Is www.ee a general search engine? If yes, is there a reason for having 3 general search engines for Estonian?

Also, do you have any suggestions for the e-commerce search plugins (like Amazon and eBay in en-US)?

Comment 3

[Sander Lepik]

i think neti.ee is preferred to www.ee. neti.ee is still homepage in many homes, but google is gaining market very fast. neti.ee is probably the oldest search engine in Estonia. Older than google. It belongs to Estonian biggest telecommunication company 'Eesti telekom'.

tho' people are often using neti.ee to search from google :P there is selectbox for it :) this happens before they switch to google for real..

about e-commerce.. http://www.osta.ee

Comment 4

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Let's go for neti.ee then. Plus, thanks for the great suggestion about osta.ee.

So let's summarize:

general search:
* google
* neti.ee

e-commerce search (we need to choose 2)
* amazon
* ebay
* osta

specific interest search:
* et.wikipedia.org
* any others?

Regarding e-commerce search: how popular are Amazon and eBay in Estonia? From what I see in Alexa, not much, so maybe there's some other candidate that you have been thinking of? Osta seems to be an auctioning site, so how about a bookstore?

Regarding specific interest search: CC is great and we like keeping it where we can, but if you could try to think of something that would benefit Estonian users as much or even more, that would be cool :) An example I have in mind is a public on-line library with Estonian literature, or maybe some kind of a dictionary?

Let me know what you think :)

Comment 5

[Sander Lepik]

general search - OK

e-commerce
ebay
and maybe www.kuldnebors.ee not osta.ee as in kuldnebors.ee there is a lot of used stuff etc but it's more general. tho' i have no good idea :)

specific interest is maybe www.riigiteataja.ee (https://www.riigiteataja.ee/ert/ert.jsp?link=search-form) - it's an online database of Estonian laws and legislations. I think people in Estonia would use it more than CC.

Comment 6

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #5)
> general search - OK

cool :)

> 
> e-commerce
> ebay
> and maybe www.kuldnebors.ee not osta.ee as in kuldnebors.ee there is a lot of
> used stuff etc but it's more general. tho' i have no good idea :)

According to Alexa, osta.ee is twice as popular as kuldnebors.ee. So how about keeping osta.ee?

> specific interest is maybe www.riigiteataja.ee
> (https://www.riigiteataja.ee/ert/ert.jsp?link=search-form) - it's an online
> database of Estonian laws and legislations. I think people in Estonia would use
> it more than CC.

Nice suggestion! Although looking at their search form, I have to ask: is it possible to choose good defaults and let users only type their (one) search phrase in the search box? In case of plug-ins, we effectively have only one field that can be changed by the user, not ~20 ;)

Comment 7

[Sander Lepik]

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> > general search - OK
> 
> cool :)
> 
> > 
> > e-commerce
> > ebay
> > and maybe www.kuldnebors.ee not osta.ee as in kuldnebors.ee there is a lot of
> > used stuff etc but it's more general. tho' i have no good idea :)
> 
> According to Alexa, osta.ee is twice as popular as kuldnebors.ee. So how about
> keeping osta.ee?
Ok, fine by me :) If more users then better.
> 
> > specific interest is maybe www.riigiteataja.ee
> > (https://www.riigiteataja.ee/ert/ert.jsp?link=search-form) - it's an online
> > database of Estonian laws and legislations. I think people in Estonia would use
> > it more than CC.
> 
> Nice suggestion! Although looking at their search form, I have to ask: is it
> possible to choose good defaults and let users only type their (one) search
> phrase in the search box? In case of plug-ins, we effectively have only one
> field that can be changed by the user, not ~20 ;)

yeah, maybe a little bit complicated but i think searching by title ("Pealkiri") is most common and all other options can be the same.

Comment 8

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #7)

> yeah, maybe a little bit complicated but i think searching by title
> ("Pealkiri") is most common and all other options can be the same.

I tried the search on the website and it's like you say: the title seems to suffice. But there's also a date there which is set in the form using JS, so that when you submit, you're actually sending title and date.

I then tried sending the post data with only the title (no date, since we can't have a changing parameter in the search plugin), and I got redirected to https://www.riigiteataja.ee/ert/ert.jsp :(

But, there are actually two forms on that page: Otsing terviktekstidest and Otsing algtekstidest. What is the difference? The second one doesn't require a date.

Comment 9

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Sander, what do you think about comment 8?

The current list that we're discussing includes:

general search:
* google
* neti.ee

e-commerce search
* ebay
* osta

specific interest search:
* et.wikipedia.org
* www.riigiteataja.ee (if we can solve the date problem, see comment 8)

If we can't solve the problem described in comment 8, we should try to look for other options. Any ideas? 

Can you also confirm that Amazon is of no or little relevance to Estonian users, please?

Let's try to solve this bug this week. Let me know what you think :)

Comment 10

[Sander Lepik]

if i got correct info then amazone doesn't ship many things directly to Estonia so people don't use it too much

about riigiteataja.. terviktekstid means full texts (full laws that are currently in use) algtekstid means drafts and stuff like that

so the date is useful to get laws that are in use for the selected date :(

one more option could be spelling dictionary for estonian words - http://www.eki.ee/dict/qs2006/ (to test, some estonian words: kool, õpetaja, keel, viil) it gives description and meaning of the word + some examples how to use it in sentence (estonian is hard even for estonians :P this web page can help a lot :))

Comment 11

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Sander, terrific idea!

So, let me summarize:

general search:
* google
* neti.ee

e-commerce search
* ebay
* osta

specific interest search:
* et.wikipedia.org
* eki.ee (spelling dictionary)

I just wrote to osta.ee, neti.ee and eki.ee asking for their permissions and parameters to use in the plugins. Let's see what they answer.

Comment 12

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

We have permission from eki.ee from Indrek Hein:

================================================

> In the upcoming release of the Estonian version of Firefox, we would like
> to include eki.ee dictionary <http://www.eki.ee/dict/qs2006/> on the list
> of the default search engine plug-ins. This usually implies driving more
> traffic to your website and therefore please advise if we have your
> permission to do so.

Yes, please add the plugin. I don't think it will have any adverse effect.

>
> If yes, please provide the URL and the parameters you would like us to use
> in the plug-in. If you wish, we can add another parameter for you to
> identify the traffic driven by the plug-in.

The queries will be served by http://www.eki.ee/dict/qs2006/index.cgi
For a general use, there is only one meaningful parameter Q for query,
"what is searched" in utf-8 encoding. All the rest is tuned to safe
defaults and can be omitted. F denotes field and defaults to M (headword,
guaranteed to be present in every dictionary while the other fields may
vary), O is boolean - 0 means any word from a multi-word query must be
present (the default), 1 means all words are required to be present, E is
for allowed errors, but the fuzzy search is turned off for utf-8
dictionaries so it does not apply to ÕS. Care must be taken that wildcard
characters * and ? do not acidentally be included in the query. Nothing
bad will happen, just that the meaningless '*'-query eats up server time.
The output will be restricted anyway.

So, to look for šaakal (jackal), the query is best formed as
http://www.eki.ee/dict/qs2006/index.cgi?Q=%C5%A1aakal

Respectfully,
Indrek.Hein eki.ee

================================================

Comment 13

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

We have permission from osta.ee from Tooams R. Raist:

================================================

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us in this matter.  Our main browser for
development is also Mozilla Firefox and 33% from our users are using it
also. Therefore we are always ready for co-operation with you.
We will have search in this URL starting from 14.okt. 2008.  ( keyword
search )

If you have more detailed questions or directions for us  then please
feel free to contact me.


http://www.osta.ee/firefox/?keyword=$keyword


All the best

Tooams R. Raist

================================================

Let's wait for them to implement this URL and then let's prepare a patch. Still waiting for neti.ee, I'll ping them today.

Comment 14

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #13)
> http://www.osta.ee/firefox/?keyword=$keyword

Looks like this is working already :) I tried http://www.osta.ee/firefox/?keyword=foto and it worked fine.

> Still waiting for neti.ee, I'll ping them today.

Hrm, still nothing. I'll try to call them tomorrow :/

Comment 15

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Sander, thanks a lot for pinging neti.ee :) I got the answer today:

==============================================

Yes, you can do that! We are very pleased if you do so.

We currently providing opensearch.org-s proposed XML
(http://www.neti.ee/otsing.xml) on our pages that works with firefox as
well. Please use the same URL that described on OpenSearchDescription as
search destination - i.e.
http://www.neti.ee/cgi-bin/otsing?query={searchTerms}&src=web

No additional identification parameters needed.

Regards,

Kain Kalju

==============================================

Looks like we're set! :) Let's work on the patch now. Sander, want to give it a try? For favicons, we'll need to use http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/cgi/data/data and we should put all the search parameters in separate <Param/> elements. More on this topic: http://developer.mozilla.org/En/Creating_MozSearch_plugins

I'll be happy to help out, so simply let me know if you want to do this (and if you have time).

Thanks!

Comment 16

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Attachment: eki-ee.xml

Comment 17

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Attachment: osta-ee.xml

Comment 18

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Attachment: neti-ee.xml

Comment 19

[Seth Bindernagel]

Attachment: Patch for Wikipedia search plugin for Estonian

Comment 20

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Attachment: searchplugins for estonian

patch adding eki, osta, neti, wikipedia-et

Comment 21

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Attachment: searchplugins, v2

removed (ee) from sp names and added region.properties search order fix

Comment 22

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Comment on attachment 344582 [details] [diff] [review]
searchplugins, v2

Gandalf, thanks so much.

Comment 23

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

fxd

gandalf:et zbraniecki$ hg push ssh://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/et
pushing to ssh://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/et
searching for changes
remote: adding changesets
remote: adding manifests
remote: adding file changes
remote: added 1 changesets with 6 changes to 6 files

Comment 24

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Fixed on cvs as well :)

Sander, it would be great if you could verify in a nightly build if everything's OK (and add the verified1.9.0.4 keyword if yes). Thanks!

Checking in browser/chrome/browser-region/region.properties;
/l10n/l10n/et/browser/chrome/browser-region/region.properties,v  <--  region.properties
new revision: 1.4; previous revision: 1.3
done
Checking in browser/searchplugins/list.txt;
/l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/list.txt,v  <--  list.txt
new revision: 1.2; previous revision: 1.1
done

RCS file: /l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/eki-ee.xml,v
done
Checking in eki-ee.xml;
/l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/eki-ee.xml,v  <--  eki-ee.xml
initial revision: 1.1
done
RCS file: /l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/neti-ee.xml,v
done
Checking in neti-ee.xml;
/l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/neti-ee.xml,v  <--  neti-ee.xml
initial revision: 1.1
done
RCS file: /l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/osta-ee.xml,v
done
Checking in osta-ee.xml;
/l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/osta-ee.xml,v  <--  osta-ee.xml
initial revision: 1.1
done
RCS file: /l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/wikipedia-et.xml,v
done
Checking in wikipedia-et.xml;
/l10n/l10n/et/browser/searchplugins/wikipedia-et.xml,v  <--  wikipedia-et.xml
initial revision: 1.1
done

Comment 25

[Sander Lepik]

Downloaded and installed it. Works great, also all new searchplugins are working well. Superb! :)

Comment 26

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Marking as verified per Sander's comment 25. Thanks.