Ideas for BOINC related Firefox Search Plugins

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Profile Lee Carre
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Message 261292 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 1:18:57 UTC
Last modified: 13 Mar 2006, 1:19:24 UTC

hello again everyone, as promised i'm going to write a plugin for the SETI fora

but i have a question: if i only write one plugin, and you had to choose between searching thread titles, or posts/messages, which would it be?

but if enough people show interest in both, then i'll write seperate ones for each, cos i'm nice like that ;)

feedback wanted as always please :)
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Message 261331 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 2:42:28 UTC - in response to Message 261292.  

hello again everyone, as promised I'm going to write a plug in for the SET I fora

but i have a question: if i only write one plugin, and you had to choose between searching thread titles, or posts/messages, which would it be?

but if enough people show interest in both, then I'll write separate ones for each, cos I'm nice like that ;)

feedback wanted as always please :)


Hi Lee,
It seems like it would be better, at least to me, to search the actual posts. Many of the thread titles don't exactly correspond with what is ended up being discussed. Take the Linux Q & A. If someone didn't specifically include "Linux" as a keyword every bit of what was discussed there would be missed. As to what we were just talking about, Firefox and extensions. Much of that could be used by other users besides Linux users only.
BTW, I got that spell checker you mentioned installed and am trying it out now.
It works better than aspellfox for the simple fact you can maintain a personal dictionary, but it seemed like it didn't select the right word as often.
Jim

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Message 261334 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 2:52:05 UTC - in response to Message 261331.  
Last modified: 13 Mar 2006, 2:53:01 UTC

i have a question: if i only write one plugin, and you had to choose between searching thread titles, or posts/messages, which would it be?
It seems like it would be better, at least to me, to search the actual posts. Many of the thread titles don't exactly correspond with what is ended up being discussed. Take the Linux Q & A. If someone didn't specifically include "Linux" as a keyword every bit of what was discussed there would be missed. As to what we were just talking about, Firefox and extensions. Much of that could be used by other users besides Linux users only.
Hi Jim,
that's a very good point, i hadn't thought of that :)
so that's 2 votes for searching posts rather than titles (Jim any myself)

BTW, I got that spell checker you mentioned installed and am trying it out now.
It works better than aspellfox for the simple fact you can maintain a personal dictionary, but it seemed like it didn't select the right word as often.
ah, good, i haven't had the chance to test it yet, still haven't restarted Fx lol
i'm glad it delivers as advertised thou :)
i look forward to using it, hopefully you'll notice the quality of my posts get better ;)
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Message 261336 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 2:57:31 UTC

What Jim said. Often the subject is far afield from what the actual topic is. In my experience the search function, as it is, is haphazard at best. As an example I just now put in a couple stanzas from Jim's post. Entering "select right word" shows this thread as the 2nd entry in the results. Putting in "personal dictionary" yields many results with the words "person" "personal" and "dictionary", but this thread is nowhere to be found in the 3 pages of results returned. Sometimes it feels like a nut, sometimes it don't. :)
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Message 261338 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 3:04:28 UTC - in response to Message 261336.  
Last modified: 13 Mar 2006, 3:04:44 UTC

In my experience the search function, as it is, is haphazard at best. As an example I just now put in a couple stanzas from Jim's post. Entering "select right word" shows this thread as the 2nd entry in the results. Putting in "personal dictionary" yields many results with the words "person" "personal" and "dictionary", but this thread is nowhere to be found in the 3 pages of results returned.

indeed, i don't see why they don't just have an all-in-one search that does everything (i'll experiement with tweaking the request URL, maybe i can do both ;) by no specifying a "posts/titles filter")
i'm sure a seperate search for each is easier to code, but that shouldn't be the reason for seperating the 2

it would be nice if the google search was up to date, because there are only a few things i don't like about google's search, and the delay is one of them because usually most people are interested in the most recent posts/threads, and google just doesn't cut it

(another thing is that it doesn't recognise that some links in a wiki are to historical versions of the same page, and shouldn't be returned as results for a query, because obviously someone is going to want the most recent verison of a page 99.9% of the time, and for your average users who just click and expect it to work (rightly so) it fails, because often it shows an old version of the page, and well, considering how popular the wiki format is, i can only view that as a fault on google's part)

so that's 3 votes for posts :)
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Message 261339 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 3:06:47 UTC

another question for you folks, what would be a good, short, descriptive title for this thread?
so that people quickly know what it's about, and that it's providing something rather than asking a question
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Message 261345 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 3:28:40 UTC - in response to Message 261339.  
Last modified: 13 Mar 2006, 3:37:01 UTC

another question for you folks, what would be a good, short, descriptive title for this thread?
so that people quickly know what it's about, and that it's providing something rather than asking a question

How about just add "ideas for" to it. "Ideas for Firefox search plugins". Or a little longer but more specific "Ideas for Firefox search plugins for Seti Forums" Or stick with the first version and you can discuss writing that "perfect" spell checker plugin! Ha ha! (I still miss my "on the fly" checker!)

/edit/ Oops I should have said "Ideas for Firefox plugins" to cover any type plugin. or even "Firefox Plugins for SETI - Ideas?"
Jim

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Message 261517 - Posted: 13 Mar 2006, 17:08:41 UTC
Last modified: 13 Mar 2006, 17:09:52 UTC

I've submitted v1.0 of a search plugin for the forums using the post search method

unfortunetly i was unable to include the ablilty to display sidebar results due to the way the page is structured, if the structure changes in future and it's possible to have sidebar results, then i'll add the ability

as for thread names, i like Jim's idea of including "ideas for" at the begining
however it's not just for SETI, i'm open to suggestions for primarily any BOINC related search, and posisbly others

as previously posted, i made one for the main CPDN forum, because there's a lot of activity there, and lots of sub-forums, and i thought many people would find it helpful (i sure do)

[edit]to change thread title[/edit]
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Message 261761 - Posted: 14 Mar 2006, 5:06:30 UTC - in response to Message 261517.  
Last modified: 14 Mar 2006, 5:06:51 UTC

I've submitted v1.0 of a search plugin for the forums using the post search method

as usual, please feel free to test it to death, it should work perfectly thou
any feedback is appreciated as always :)
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Message 261798 - Posted: 14 Mar 2006, 7:03:37 UTC - in response to Message 261761.  

I've submitted v1.0 of a search plugin for the forums using the post search method

as usual, please feel free to test it to death, it should work perfectly thou
any feedback is appreciated as always :)


Congratulations again! So far it works perfectly. I tried a test. I remembered a post where I compared the classic seti credits to buggy wheels and the seti-boinc to automobile tires, so I put in the single word "tire" and within a second I had the post in front of me. That will be a lot easier than having to open another tab and navigate to a search form. It's always right there with you.
Jim

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Message 266016 - Posted: 21 Mar 2006, 3:28:23 UTC

Anyone coming here looking for the search plugins mentioned in Lee Carre's sig,
Seems like he links back to this post (Lee was that intentional?) but it doesn't say anywhere exactly where to find them.
Here it goes...
The seti forum search plugin is here
and the boinc wiki and boinc stats search plugins are here.
Jim

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Message 266019 - Posted: 21 Mar 2006, 3:36:44 UTC
Last modified: 21 Mar 2006, 3:38:19 UTC

Anyone coming here looking for the search plugins mentioned in Lee Carre's sig,
Seems like he links back to this post (Lee was that intentional?) but it doesn't say anywhere exactly where to find them.
Here it goes...
The seti forum search plugin is here
and the boinc wiki and boinc stats search plugins are here.

/edit/ Sorry for the double post, server got hung up when I tried to post and for some reason it posted it twice!
Jim

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Message 266099 - Posted: 21 Mar 2006, 5:36:10 UTC - in response to Message 266016.  

Lee was that intentional?
yes it was, so that everything is in one place (for when i create other plugins)
also if someone reads thru this thread they should know that plugins are hosted on the mycroft site and they can search for them

also when i've published a new plugin i've put a link to the search results for it

the idea of "guiding" rather than doing it for users is so they learn to do things for themselves (rather than needing someone to hold their hand thru everything they do) and so they realise that there are thousaunds of other plugins for many many other search engines out there, not just boinc related ones

but yes, maybe i should have had a "quick help" bit at the beginning, however i didn't have a long term plan, it's just sort of evolved over time, but as with anything you have to do at least some reading first
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Message 266125 - Posted: 21 Mar 2006, 6:58:33 UTC

Ok, Lee, I understand but it's just that I had a hard time finding the links and I knew already what to look for! Just thinking someone seeing it new might miss it among all the posts about the different plugins. It's up front now though. (Also I've got my prefs set to show newest first and the actual links to mycroft and the others are pretty far down looking this way!)
Jim

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Message 269076 - Posted: 26 Mar 2006, 10:26:06 UTC - in response to Message 266125.  

Ok, Lee, I understand but it's just that I had a hard time finding the links and I knew already what to look for! Just thinking someone seeing it new might miss it among all the posts about the different plugins. It's up front now though. (Also I've got my prefs set to show newest first and the actual links to mycroft and the others are pretty far down looking this way!)

fair enough, i do see your point, i'll try to keep the list more accesable in future :)
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Message 269078 - Posted: 26 Mar 2006, 10:29:34 UTC - in response to Message 266016.  
Last modified: 26 Mar 2006, 10:30:57 UTC

The seti forum search plugin
and the boinc wiki and boincstats search plugins
also a plugin for the climate prediction forum is available
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Message 271549 - Posted: 29 Mar 2006, 21:47:26 UTC
Last modified: 29 Mar 2006, 21:48:53 UTC

i have a suggestion for firefox, but don't know where suggestions should be sent/posted

i'm not sure if it's an actual bug or not so i don't know if the bugzilla database is appropriate, it's not something which causes crashes etc. but more like bad implementation of a standard

does anyone know where suggestions should be sent?
i can give details about the suggestion if it makes a difference
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Message 271858 - Posted: 30 Mar 2006, 7:50:09 UTC - in response to Message 271549.  

i have a suggestion for firefox, but don't know where suggestions should be sent/posted

i'm not sure if it's an actual bug or not so i don't know if the bugzilla database is appropriate, it's not something which causes crashes etc. but more like bad implementation of a standard

does anyone know where suggestions should be sent?
i can give details about the suggestion if it makes a difference


I have figured that some pages can cause a crash. I had that problem in netscape, mozilla, and another one that I don't remember the name of. Was needing a utility or something from this site about a year ago and no matter what browser I hit it with the browser would die. I could hit any other site with no problems for hours and hours but then I'd go back to that one site and boom!
That's what made me finally switch to Konqueror. It took getting used to after using Netscape and Mozilla for so long but that's the only one that would log on to that site without dying. And no, it wasn't a hack, warez or porno site, this was a big reputable company that I needed a utility to configure a sound card.(Was needing to reconfigure the irq and my original disk had gotten stolen.)
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Message 276930 - Posted: 6 Apr 2006, 15:35:52 UTC - in response to Message 271858.  

I have figured that some pages can cause a crash. I had that problem in netscape, mozilla, and another one that I don't remember the name of. Was needing a utility or something from this site about a year ago and no matter what browser I hit it with the browser would die. I could hit any other site with no problems for hours and hours but then I'd go back to that one site and boom!
That's what made me finally switch to Konqueror. It took getting used to after using Netscape and Mozilla for so long but that's the only one that would log on to that site without dying. And no, it wasn't a hack, warez or porno site, this was a big reputable company that I needed a utility to configure a sound card.(Was needing to reconfigure the irq and my original disk had gotten stolen.)
never head of a major site doing that before, talk about proprietry gone mad, nevermind being totally against all the standards of the web lol

however my issue isn't with interpreting HTML and such, it's about how the browser itself works, specifically how the "auto detect proxy settings for this network" option actually detects, it should get the info from a DHCP server (so each network can specify the URL of the proxy configuration file for that network is located) (it's DHCP code 252 by the way, it's not a standard option on most DHCP servers, and has to be added manually as a string value, have a search for more information, or i can provide links for anyone who's interested)

however firefox doesn't use the URL specified in DHCP code 252, it follows it's own rules, which makes for compatibility issues because IE will work, and Fx won't (for once IE does something better! shock horror!)
also it prevents network admins from putting their proxy config file where they want it, because Fx generally ends up using the following URL: http://wpad.domain.local/wpad.dat (replace "domain" with the internal DHCP assigned domain suffix, such as in my case "carre" so i get http://wpad.carre.local/wpad.dat)
which causes quite a few problems
and i'm sure it would cause quite a few headaches for network admins trying to work out why Fx doesn't take the settings but IE does (it took me quite a lot of reading and studying network captures with ethereal to find out how Fx searches)
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Message 279081 - Posted: 10 Apr 2006, 15:38:43 UTC
Last modified: 10 Apr 2006, 16:13:35 UTC

this is about extensions rather than search plugins (so that those who are only interested in search plugins know to stop reading :) )

as mentioned previously i've suggested the use of the SessionSaver extension, well today i found a potential better/improved replacement called Session Manager it claims to save even more than sessionsaver and is apparently more reliable (sometimes sessionsaver doesn't restore properly), however i've yet to confirm either of these.
It does seem to save at least as much as sessionsaver does, and saves things in a much better way, saving to external files rather than cluttering up the prefs.js file :)

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)
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Message boards : Number crunching : Ideas for BOINC related Firefox Search Plugins


 
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