521996 - [it] Choose search plug-ins for Fennec in Italian

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: it / Italian, 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 Italian. 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 Italian, 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 3

[Seth Bindernagel]

Hi Guys:  Just a friendly reminder, as we move closer to the general availability date for Fennec in mid-December, has your team had any chance to consider search providers?  Thanks!

Comment 4

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Hi Seth, I asked already a couple of time on the l10n mailing list about using Google Maps as a possible search provider but still no answer.
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/browse_thread/thread/36074954cd4ed9ea/782d5d4d1abb57cd

About the other search engines:
* Google and Wikipedia-it are fine (we're already using them in Firefox)
* Amazon is not suitable, since it's not available in Italy/Italian. Right now we're using eBay on Firefox, and it seems the only solution since there isn't an e-commerce shop as popular as eBay
* Yahoo. As explained, we could use Google Maps if that's a good solution as a "local search provider"
* Twitter is ok (not really popular, but still the most popular social network if we don't count Facebook)

Comment 5

[Seth Bindernagel]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Hi Seth, I asked already a couple of time on the l10n mailing list about using
> Google Maps as a possible search provider but still no answer.
> http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/browse_thread/thread/36074954cd4ed9ea/782d5d4d1abb57cd

Thanks, Francesco.  After I sent this, I remember that I had that note sitting in my inbox and I pinged Stas to make sure he replies tomorrow.  :)  Apologies for the lag in response time to your remarks.  I hope Stas will respond tomorrow after he and I chat.

> About the other search engines:
> * Google and Wikipedia-it are fine (we're already using them in Firefox)
> * Amazon is not suitable, since it's not available in Italy/Italian. Right now
> we're using eBay on Firefox, and it seems the only solution since there isn't
> an e-commerce shop as popular as eBay
> * Yahoo. As explained, we could use Google Maps if that's a good solution as a
> "local search provider"

Google Maps would work.

> * Twitter is ok (not really popular, but still the most popular social network
> if we don't count Facebook)

Any other social networks for Italy?

So, the list so far could be Google, Wikipedia-it, eBay, Google Maps, and Twitter.  We can always leave some off and do not have to include the whole set.  It might be worth shipping Twitter just to have it there for those who use it in Italy.  What do you think?

Comment 6

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Any other social networks for Italy?

Nope.
 
> So, the list so far could be Google, Wikipedia-it, eBay, Google Maps, and
> Twitter.  We can always leave some off and do not have to include the whole
> set.  It might be worth shipping Twitter just to have it there for those who
> use it in Italy.  What do you think?

I agree, including Twitter is the best solution right now.

Comment 7

[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 8

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> 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.

I hope this meant that we can commit without attaching the modified patch and waiting for a review ;-)

Updated the patch with a meaningful description for wikipedia-it (as explained) and committed.

l10n-mozilla-1.9.2
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/it/rev/34e6228db6a4

l10n-central
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/it/rev/2e5fd6c102b4

Comment 9

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #8)

> I hope this meant that we can commit without attaching the modified patch and
> waiting for a review ;-)

Yes, precisely. That was the idea :) Thanks for landing the patch, flod.

Regarding local search and Google Maps: bug 441590 and bug 531253 are tracking problems with using Google Maps on Fennec. Unfortunately, the map and the search feature are hardly usable right now. We should probably wait for those bugs to be fixed before we include Google Maps' search plugin.

Which means that we can:
1. wait for the fixes to these bugs and leave the local search spot open for now, or
2. find a different local search engine offering good results in Italy (anything similar to yelp maybe?), or
3. leave the local search category empty and look for an useful engine from a different category (specific interest: dictionaries, phone number catalogs etc.).

Thoughts?

Comment 10

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Since there are no significant alternatives in Italy for local search, I think that we can wait and go for option #1.

Comment 11

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

OK, sounds reasonable. 

Should we then add eBay as the e-commerce search (as per comment 4) and close this bug? Would you like to create a patch for that?

Comment 12

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Attachment: Patch to add ebay-it to searchplugins for Fennec

Stas, is this patch ok? I've added the same eBay plugin used for Firefox and changed the list.txt

Comment 13

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Comment on attachment 414860 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch to add ebay-it to searchplugins for Fennec

Thanks flod. Just one comment:

>+<Description>eBay - Aste on-line</Description>

Please note that although you can use the plugin that we ship for Firefox, it's recommended that you edit or remove the description element from it. Please see <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Integrated_Search_Instructions#L10n_implementation> for more details.

Comment 14

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

I completely forgot the description fix, even if I read it two days ago...

Fixed the description and committed

l10n-mozilla-1.9.2
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/it/rev/07b81a17ce74

l10n-central
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/it/rev/ba22e76c2a09

Comment 15

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Thanks flod. Looks like we're good here. The final list is:

- google
- it.wikipedia
- eBay.it
- twitter

We're waiting for fixes that will make google maps more usable. For now though, I think we can close this bug. Let's work on google maps in a new bug in the future.

Comment 16

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Reopening, list.txt has ebay-it, but should have eBay-it. Casing matters on most OSes.

Comment 18

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Sorry, I didn't think about the casing. Fixed on branch and trunk

http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/it/rev/0cf125e1e127
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/it/rev/b3475e4a6164