In my search for some new firefox goodies I came across Web Search Pro. It's highly configurable with a large number of search engines supported and an integrated context search function. I'm still figuring it out but it's pretty interesting so far.

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Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
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In my search for some new firefox goodies I came across Web Search Pro. It's highly configurable with a large number of search engines supported and an integrated context search function. I'm still figuring it out but it's pretty interesting so far.

FWIW, Last night (or early this morning I should say) via the Web Search Pro options I suggested the addition of a BOINC Wiki search. It's been implemented and seems to work ok.

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Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

[quote]In my search for some new firefox goodies I came across Web Search Pro. It's highly configurable with a large number of search engines supported and an integrated context search function. I'm still figuring it out but it's pretty interesting so far.

thanks, sounds interesting, i'll have a look :)

[edit]hmmm, looks like it's trying to replace the standard search function, which in a standards world is a bad idea, it should preferably improve/update the current system like Advanced Search Sidebar does (allowing the user to search using multiple plugins at once)
personally i think if the author wanted to effectively replace the search system, then his time would have been better spent updating the firefox code so that it's available for all users[/edit]

FWIW, Last night (or early this morning I should say) via the Web Search Pro options I suggested the addition of a BOINC Wiki search. It's been implemented and seems to work ok.

unless it offers additional functionality, then you might as well just use the standard BOINC Wiki plugin, i (think i) managed to make it work with sidebar searching, but i don't know if Web Search Pro offers this anyway

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

while i'm here, i updated the BOINCstats plugin because the search now defults to use "exact match", so i've updated the plugin to specify not to use the exact match function, however this may change again, as i'm awaiting response from willy (the boincstats admin) for the reasons why this changed, and if it's server performance/load related than i'll change it back to use exact matching by default if it's desired

the current version (incase people want to check) is v1.2
however, as stated this may be replaced with v1.3 shortly if the admins prefer exact matching to be the default

as always, you can use the search forum on the actual web site to manually specify your search parameters (if you don't like the default behaviour)

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

i updated the BOINCstats plugin because the search now defults to use "exact match", so i've updated the plugin to specify not to use the exact match function, however this may change again, as i'm awaiting response from willy (the boincstats admin) for the reasons why this changed, and if it's server performance/load related than i'll change it back to use exact matching by default if it's desired

right, as per advise from boincstats a new version (v1.3) has been submitted to mycroft in accordance with the wishes of boincstats

the "new" plugin is just the same as the old one, and uses the default behaviour of the site, which, now, is to use "exact match"
the plugin doesn't actually specify if exact match should be used or not, so it will always follow the site default

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

i've found another extension that i recommend, it improves your level of privacy while browsing, by not telling other sites where you've browsed/navigated from (to get to their site)

it's called RefControl

instructions are available on the authors site
but for average users i'd recommend setting the default (for sites not listed) to be "block (3rd party only)"
you may need to allow (or forge) the referer for some sites to work, just add them to the list so they're handled as an exception to the default

if anyone needs help/advice with this then i'd be happy to help :)

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

today i found a potential better/improved replacement called Session Manager
...
i'm gonna be trying it out over the next few days and i'll post back with results on how well it works (but the idea of storing session data externally looks promising and other extensions by the author are good)

well after a few days of trying it i have to say i'm impressed, it's much more reliable and stable than sessionsaver, and moving/copying/backing-up sessions is far easier than with sessionsaver (which was nearly impossible to deal with)
each session is saved as a file in a "sessions" folder in your profile folder, and it just a normal file you can move/copy/backup as you would any other file, so management is much much easier :)

one thing i'll say is that i've only tested it on a few of my PCs, i've not installed it on my main PC (which has a large number of tabs to restore for my current session) because i wanted to test it first before potentially loosing my session (of about 100 tabs)

i'll post back again with details of how well it works with huge sessions (of 100-200 tabs) and any tips i find to migrate from sessionsaver to session manger with minimal pain and fuss

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

Oh, just so people know, i've been given an account for the BOINC Wiki, so if somebody wants something changed, give me a bell :) (preferably not in this thread thou)

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

in light of the way searching has changed at BOINCstats i can either create additional plugins or use a more advanced method allowing the user to change multiple options while only using a single plugin file

the problem with more plugins is that there is then a larger number to maintain and there will be a lot if every possible combination is made available (this would be quite inefficient)

the problem with a more advanced method is that the standard plugins can only have one option (variable) (hence why lots of them would be needed for the above method), but to specify multiple options (variables) requires the installation of an extension (sort of like ConQuery, just to give you an idea) which supports the capability of using advanced functions and specifying multiple search options
this method is also easier to use, and i'm generally in favour of it


so, my questions are:
1. given the choice, which method would you prefer?
2. if the advanced method was chosen, which extension would you like to, or already use?

any feedback is greatly appreciated :)
also if someone wants to request search plugins for something else, or has any ideas related to the ones already released then please feel free to post them here

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

i've found another extension that i recommend, it improves your level of privacy while browsing, by not telling other sites where you've browsed/navigated from (to get to their site)

it's called RefControl

instructions are available on the authors site
but for average users i'd recommend setting the default (for sites not listed) to be "block (3rd party only)"
you may need to allow (or forge) the referer for some sites to work, just add them to the list so they're handled as an exception to the default

if anyone needs help/advice with this then i'd be happy to help :)

Worth mentioning again!

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me@rescam.org

i've found another extension that i recommend, it improves your level of privacy while browsing, by not telling other sites where you've browsed/navigated from (to get to their site)

it's called RefControl

instructions are available on the authors site
but for average users i'd recommend setting the default (for sites not listed) to be "block (3rd party only)"
you may need to allow (or forge) the referer for some sites to work, just add them to the list so they're handled as an exception to the default

if anyone needs help/advice with this then i'd be happy to help :)

Worth mentioning again!

well, now that you mention it, i did some tests a while ago (using Ethereal) so see how RefControl compares to comercial alternatives (like Norton Internet Security).

the result was that the right combination of firefox extensions is better than a product you have to pay for (long live open source!), RefControl blocks referers for images as well as links, so images hosted off-site can't track you either :)
norton only blocks referers for links (which ist't as good).

on a side note; on the adblocking front Adblock Plus with the Adblock Filterset.G Updater subscription is unbeatable, it blocks more ads (and in a better way) than norton without affecting the genuine content.
It allows you to not have ads be colapsed (norton always colapses them, messing up the positioning on quite a few sites), but Adblock Plus lets you turn that function off to maintain the correct positioning.

this has been the final straw to make me move totally to firefox, completely abandoning IE, however, because norton affects data at the network level (removing ads and referers) it's changes affect all apps (and make otherwise valid code, invalid), so to only have the firefox extensions affecting web traffic, then the simplest way is to go to the settings for NIS (right-click the system-tray icon), and on the firewall tab; remove all ports from the "HTTP port list" (the list determines which ports NIS affects, hence working at the network level; affecting all apps).

another odd thing NIS does, is it blocks the "Accept-Encoding:" HTTP header, which prevents any app from using compression over the connection (including web browsers, news readers, download managers, the boinc client etc. anything that accesses the web), by removing the ports from the port list and using firefox extenisons instead you software will be able to sent the "Accept-Encoding:" HTTP header which tells the server that they can handle compression, which gives a noticable performacne improvement!

if anyone needs help with any of this, then please let me know.

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Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines