Browser search providers

Over the years I’ve written a number of search providers for Firefox and Chromium. Since most browsers now support the OpenSearch format, I only have to do this once. Here is a list of handy ones that you might want, along with the search keyword I use for fast searching in the URL bar.

Search Keyword Notes
Man pages man Searches local man pages. Requires local Apache server and man2html.
Google Images ggi Searches Google Images directly.
Google Maps ggm Searches Google Maps directly.
Pathfinder PRD prd Searches the Pathfinder PRD at paizo.com. For the tabletop gaming geeks in the house.
PHP Manual php Searches PHP documentation at php.net
Python Documentation py Searches local documentation in localhost/doc/python. Requires local Apache server, python-doc, libjs-underscore, and a quick fix.
Python 3 Documentation py3 Searches local documentation in localhost/doc/python3. Requires local Apache server, python3-doc, libjs-underscore, and a quick fix.

 
If these don’t install automatically, save them to your Firefox profile’s “searchplugins” folder. I’ve also got one for tolaris.com. If your browser supports it, you should see it offered for download in the search area automatically.

* The search feature of local Python documentation is broken under Ubuntu 12.04. To fix it:

sudo apt-get install libjs-underscore
sudo ln -s /usr/share/javascript/underscore/underscore.min.js \
/usr/share/javascript/underscore/jquery.js

You could also search the online python documentation or man pages, but those don’t necessarily represent what you have installed locally, and they require a network connection. I prefer to use local documentation when possible, so I can access them when offline.

Creating your own search provider is easy. See the Mozilla documentation. To create the base64-encoded image string, see the base64 command on Linux.

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