522006 - [ru] Choose search plug-ins for Fennec in Russian

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: ru / Russian, 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 Russian. 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 Russian, 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. 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

[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 2

[Alexander L. Slovesnik]

My current proposal is:
1) Use Google and Twitter from en-US locale
2) Use Russian Wikipedia
3) Replace Yahoo with Yandex (see Bug 408880 comment #0 for rationale on removing Yahoo; http://trends.spylog.ru/global-statistic-search-engines/ and http://www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/searches.html?lang=en for some statistic on search engines market share in Russia) 
4) Replace Amazon with some local e-commerce search, as AFAIK Amazon is not popular in Russia and lacks localized interface (probably we can use http://market.yandex.ru/, http://torg.mail.ru/ or http://price.ru/ as replacement)

Konstantin/Alexey/Alexey, what is your opinion?

Comment 3

[Konstantin A. Lepikhov]

+1 for yandex.ru and price.ru. But IMO we should check that this sites are rendered correctly in Fennec.

Comment 4

[Seth Bindernagel]

I took a look at Alexa for some data and saw the following listed as the top 3 for Russian users:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/price.ru
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rambler.ru
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimum-price.ru

Looks like Price.ru is #1 by Alexa's metrics.

Thanks for the research guys.  Feel free to add any more comments and Stas might also chime in.

Comment 5

[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 6

[Alexander L. Slovesnik]

Landed on 1.9.2:
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/ru/rev/8f75c54a3401

Landed on 1.9.3:
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/ru/rev/51c36d6850c9
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/ru/rev/916035ad19bc

Comment 7

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Thanks Unghost.

So right now, we have:

- google (general)
- twitter (social)
- ru.wikipedia (reference)

And we can add:

- price.ru (e-commerce)
- ? (local, around-me)

Any suggestions for good local search? If not, we could either stay at 4 engines total, or add one more engine ("specific interest" category). Both solutions are fine.

Comment 8

[Alexander L. Slovesnik]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Any suggestions for good local search? If not, we could either stay at 4
> engines total, or add one more engine ("specific interest" category). Both
> solutions are fine.
I propose yandex.ru as local search (see comment #2)

Comment 9

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I propose yandex.ru as local search (see comment #2)

I meant local as in "give me the list of all pizzerias in the 5km radius from my location". Does yandex.ru offer this functionality? Maybe we could include maps.yandex.ru? I'm going to test it on n810, could you test it as well? (in a mobile or desktop build).

Thanks.

Comment 10

[Alexander L. Slovesnik]

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > I propose yandex.ru as local search (see comment #2)
> 
> I meant local as in "give me the list of all pizzerias in the 5km radius from
> my location". Does yandex.ru offer this functionality?
> Maybe we could include
> maps.yandex.ru?
You can try to use mobile version of Yandex maps - http://m.maps.yandex.ru/

> I'm going to test it on n810, could you test it as well? (in a
> mobile or desktop build).
WFM on linux desktop build.

Comment 11

[Konstantin A. Lepikhov]

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > I propose yandex.ru as local search (see comment #2)
> 
> I meant local as in "give me the list of all pizzerias in the 5km radius from
> my location". Does yandex.ru offer this functionality? Maybe we could include
> maps.yandex.ru? I'm going to test it on n810, could you test it as well? (in a
> mobile or desktop build).
> 
> Thanks.
Yandex doesn't provide linux version of Yandex.Maps, only J2ME applet and native app for Symbian and Windows Mobile. But online version offers some variant of this functionality - you can find organizations and other POI as well. So the right question "Do the Yandex support the same geolocation API as Google"? :)

Comment 12

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Closing this one, since "ru" has long shipped.