521993 - [he] Choose search plug-ins for Fennec in Hebrew

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: he / Hebrew, defect)

Description

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

You've indicated an interest in participating in the localization of mobile Firefox (aka Fennec). We want to ship Fennec with a good list of search engines for Hebrew. As the technical details of implementation are being worked on, we'd like to start the discussion about the choice of search engines. This bug is about agreeing on a set of search engines, and will not tackle the implementation (at least not yet).

First, the localization team and Staś will look at the market for the locale and come up with a good set of search providers. The guidelines for making recommendations are on https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Mobile/Productization. You're welcome to suggest engines already shipped in desktop Firefox for Hebrew, if they fit well in the categories outlined on the wiki.

For en-US, we currently use the following set, which may serve as an inspiration:
Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter.

Note that according to the guidelines, for some categories it may be better to leave them empty than to ship with en engine that's irrelevant or unavailable in your region.

After we decided on a particular search engine, we will need to test it in Fennec. You can test on a mobile device and on the desktop (download the builds from <http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/>). Staś will help with testing on a device, too. If the service works fine, Staś will contact the owner and ask for permission, and for specifics like proper search flags. $name, we'll likely need your help to at least get the contact information if we don't have them already.

We don't know the implementation details yet, so for now, please don't create patches nor land anything. We will keep you posted as we figure out the how's and when's.

Thanks.

Comment 1

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

I'm not sure on how useful are regular sites in the mobile world. For start, I'd suggest replacing Wikipedia with our Hebrew Wikipedia searchplugin which we use on Firefox.

Amazon and Yahoo aren't quite used on our region. Is it possible to replace them or we are forced to keep these?

Comment 2

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Hi Tomer,

It is definitely possible to replace them, that's the purpose of this bug - to find good replacements :)

Do you have any suggestions?

Comment 3

[Seth Bindernagel]

Hey Tomer:  Any further thoughts on your Fennec locale's suggestions?

Comment 4

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Hey Tomer:  Any further thoughts on your Fennec locale's suggestions?

There are no supported devices in the local market here, and the cellular providers prefer not to provide web access. Actually the cellular carriers does provide web access, but restrict it to their local servers (their "portal") and charge extra fees for the world wide web in most data packages for mobile phones. 

I think we should stick with the default set of search plugins, but replace them with localized plugins if available by the service, and start thinking about how to push further the adoption of real web access. In the meantime, I know some people who use Fennec daily on ultra-mobile laptops, and they say it is fantastic for their needs.

Comment 5

[Seth Bindernagel]

(In reply to comment #4)

> I think we should stick with the default set of search plugins, but replace
> them with localized plugins if available by the service, and start thinking
> about how to push further the adoption of real web access. In the meantime, I
> know some people who use Fennec daily on ultra-mobile laptops, and they say it
> is fantastic for their needs.

Sounds good.  

Can you send us in a separate email the very specific use-cases you are seeing for Fennec on ultra-mobile laptops?

Comment 6

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Attachment: Bootstrapping search engines with Google, localized Wikipedia and Twitter

Here's a patch resetting the mobile/searchplugins/ directory to a minimal set of search engines that we would like to ship your locale with. Please read this comment carefully before you land this patch.

*Important*: There has been a change to how we use the  <Description/> elements present in the plug-ins (see bug 528655 and bug 529869). We want to emphasize that the search is integrated with the browser to better reflect what a search plugin is and what it does. You will need to edit the Wikipedia plug-in before you commit this patch. Please read <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Integrated_Search_Instructions> for detailed instructions.

For Google and Twitter, we don't have to copy the XML files to your mobile/searchplugins/ directory. Plugins identical to en-US are pulled from source automatically. It's enough to put the engine's name in list.txt for this to work (which I did). I also updated the Wikipedia plug-in to use a bigger icon, see bug 517997 for details.

Please edit the Wikipedia plug-in and commit this patch before you opt-in in the mozilla.dev.l10n newsgroup. Opt-ins without this patch will not be taken. This does not mean that we don't want to include other search engines. On the contrary, the work and the discussion will continue in this bug until we choose a good set of search engines for your locale. Then, you will be able to opt in again, so that in the final release we include more search engines than the mineral set from this patch.

This patch is simply meant to reset your mobile/searchplugins directory so that we keep the repository clean and happy.

Thanks for understanding!

Comment 7

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Committed as changeset a2525b64670d.
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/he/rev/a2525b64670d

Comment 8

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Thanks Tomer for the landing.

So, what should we do regarding your comment 4?

(In reply to comment #4)
> I think we should stick with the default set of search plugins, but replace
> them with localized plugins if available by the service.

Should we just use Yahoo and Amazon from en-US?

Comment 9

[Delphine Lebédel [:delphine - Use needinfo]]

This is a really old bug. 
@tomer: Do you want to make any updates to the current search plugins present for Hebrew? If so, let's work from a new bug. 
thanks!

Comment 10

[Delphine Lebédel [:delphine - Use needinfo]]

Didn't realize a parch landed here, so gonna close this and open a brand new one. thanks