MultiSearch Firefox Plugin

Ryo Chijiiwa

Introduction

Overview

The MultiSearch Firefox plugin allows you to use the toolbar search box to search a number of different websites by prepending queries with certain prefixes (for example "yahoo:" to search with Yahoo! Search). These prefixes can be customized on a per-user basis, and new search types can be added as well.

Disclaimers

Installing MultiSearch

On MacOS X

  1. Find Firefox (usually in Applications folder) and right click on the icon (or control click)
  2. Select "Show package contents"
  3. In the new window, go to "Contents" > "MacOS" > "searchplugins"
  4. Copy this file andthis file into the folder
  5. Restart Firefox
  6. Click on the icon in the tool bar search bar, and select "MultiSearch"

On Windows

  1. Download this file andthis file
  2. Copy the file to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins
  3. Restart Firefox
  4. Click on the icon in the tool bar search bar, and select "MultiSearch"

Using MultiSearch

Searching with MultiSearch

To search a specific site or service, prepend your query with the designated prefix followed by a colon. For example, to search for articles on armadillos on Wikipedia, type: 
wikip:armadillo
See below for full list of supported prefixes. Prefixes can be customized (for example, so that you can use w: instead of wikip:), and new searches can also be defined (to add a site/service not supported by default). If no recognizable prefix is set, the default service will be used (the default can also be customized).

Prefixes supported by default

Prefix Site/Service
yahoo Yahoo! Search
google Google
phpf PHP function search
dict Dictionary (by dictionary.com)
thes Thesaurus (by thesaurus.reference.com)
wikip Wikipedia
gmaps Google Maps
amazon Amazon
a9 Amazon A9
flickr Flickr
trati Technorati
ebay eBay
cc create commons

Customizing MultiSearch

Note

Customized settings are stored in your browser cookie, so they will not carry over when you use a different computer.

Changing prefixes

The default prefixes can be remapped to your liking, if you want something shorter or more memorable. For example, to map "a" to "Amazon", type in the following: 
alias:a amazon
...and hit enter. A message should show up saying the alias was created. Once you've done that, you can search using that new prefix. After the example above 
a:alice in the wonderland
will search Amazon for "alice in the wonderland".

Changing the default

When no known prefix is found in the query, your search will be directed to the default search engine (Yahoo by default). If you would like to change the default, for example, to Google, type the following in the search box: 
default:google
...and hit enter. Once your default has been changed, you can simply type in a query without a prefix to search using that service.

Adding new searches

You can add new searches to the toolbar fairly easily, and create your own prefixes. Let's say you want to create a new search that uses Yahoo to search NYTimes.com. If you do an actual search, the URL might look like this: 
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Anytimes.com+china
In this case, "china" was the search string, so we know that's where the query needs to go in the URL. Simply change it with "%q%" like so: 
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Anytimes.com+%q%
Now, in your search box, type in: 
add: nyt http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Anytimes.com+%q%
...where "nyt" is our new prefix, a single space, followed by the URL we constructed above. Hit enter, and your new search is ready. In the future, you can search on nytimes.com with Yahoo by prefixing your query with "nyt:".