Petter Nilsen

Search engines in Opera 9 Technology Preview 2

Sunday, 5. February 2006, 23:47:51

browsers, features, opera, tutorial, search.ini

With the release of Opera 9 Technology Preview 2, a few new features related to search engines have been added. First of all, there is now an editor for editing, adding new and deleting search engines.

One feature that has also been added is the possibility to create a search on any website if that website has a search field. Creating a search will automatically generate the query string. If this form has multiple options, it will include whatever has been typed into the form in the search.

In this particular example, I had selected "Tom's hardware" in the dropdown box, so when I select to create a search, a edit window comes up prefilled with all values necessary to use the search.

When you want to do a search with this recently added search engine, you just type into the addressbar using the shortcut you assigned to it.

The newly added search will also be available in the search field that is next to the address bar.

A search editor has been added to the preferences that allows you to edit existing search engines.

We hope this will make it much easier to use the search engines in Opera and make this powerful feature more accessible.

Thumbnails in Opera 9 Technology Preview 2My impressions about my.opera.com

Comments

GrLT # 7. February 2006, 09:55

How to create search from opera:config ? There is search field, but after right click/create search it doesn't work...

mitchman2 # 7. February 2006, 10:00

The wizard will only work for GET and POST, but you can still add a manual search using the search editor in the prefs. Pick a name, a shortcut and use this as url: "opera:config#%s"

That should do the trick.

troels # 7. February 2006, 10:12

Nice, very nice. I believe that in some aspects of the treatment of search engines Firefox for the time being may be said to have an edge over Opera? That ought to be at least equalized now.

mitchman2 # 7. February 2006, 10:19

Ok, I was wrong, adding a search in opera:config doesn't appear to work when executing the search itself. It seems to be a bug, we are investigating.

Papagallo # 7. February 2006, 13:14

Ok, first the funny thing: I could not access this blog with
Opera 8.51 altough cookies are on but no problem with Firefox...

Anyway: As a researcher I am interested if it will also be possible
to make an entry for literature database like Ingenta:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/;jsessionid=3j67jrcmhmp45.victoria

I.e. I could look for some Science literature in Ingenta and other similar
to a search in Google? Would be great as there are a couple
of Databases that would then be at my fingertips.

Regards,
Christian

mitchman2 # 7. February 2006, 13:40

Yes, I easily created a custom search by selecting Create search on the right click menu above the search field and assign "ing" as the search shortcut.

This blog should work fine with 8.51, I tried it just this morning.

username_zen # 7. February 2006, 14:23

The new searches should also appear in the "search panel"

non-troppo # 7. February 2006, 14:31

How about using a MIME type to allow downloading / importing a search engine, ala http://nontroppo.org/wiki/SearchPlugins ?

helas # 7. February 2006, 16:28

love it. still, I feel like I _need_ UP & DOWN buttons to customize the order of engines in the list.

Chochem # 7. February 2006, 20:25

Nice... but you'll still need Opsed if you want to change the order or type of search. And it seems as if though the old 50 searches limit is still there. Wish I at least knew why?

andol # 7. February 2006, 21:00

There's no way to define the encoding when adding the search engine using the preferences.

mitchman2 # 7. February 2006, 23:27

The search engine limit will be removed in a future release, it was just not time before this TP2. No, it's not intentional

The encoding used is currently taken from the webpage. This might change in the future to let you override it.

maheshjagadeesan # 8. February 2006, 12:02

I just discovered the new release this morning and installed it pronto over my existing installation. To my frustration, the new right-click features (like adding custom search engines, and blocking content) don't seem to work for me :-(

Help!

maheshjagadeesan # 8. February 2006, 15:22

Aaaargh! Realized that the new Opera's installation program respectfully avoided overwriting my opera6.ini file, which specifically used a different menu configuration file. Once I compared the two menu configurations and brought in the new menu options, am back in businesss :-)

On a tangent, won't it be a good idea to bring in a GUI-based way for editing Opera's cool menus too? Am thinking on the lines of "Block content..." or "Site preferences..." ...

Think # 8. February 2006, 16:26

This is great! Thanks Petter!

mitchman2 # 8. February 2006, 18:19

@non-troppo: Maybe, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it. I'll chat with another guy to see how much work it would be to add the code for the download etc. for it. Gang up with moose to speed the process

@helas: you're not the first to ask for it...

@Chochem: the limit is not intentional and should be removed soon I hope.

Revil # 8. February 2006, 21:04

Yeah that is soooo neat! Just another great enhancement for the best internet experience =D

Thx!

andol # 8. February 2006, 22:28

The encoding used is currently taken from the webpage.

That's true if you create the search engine using the "Create search" menu item. But I'm talking about the "Preferences".
If you create the new search engine using "Preferences" >> "Search" >> "New" - the encoding is always set to ISO-8859-1.

mitchman2 # 9. February 2006, 00:53

It's a bug, or oversight if you wish.

mfagan # 9. February 2006, 18:16

Has any thought been given towards supporting OpenSearch? IE7 is supporting it, and it looks like it's at least being considered for Firefox 2.0. It'd be great if the same plugin were able to work in all three browsers.

When I say "supporting OpenSearch," I mean OpenSearch Description files and OpenSearch autodiscovery in HTML. Supporting OpenSearch Responses would be very cool too (IE7 does), but just supporting the Description files is not much change from how search currently works.

URL: http://opensearch.a9.com/

mitchman2 # 9. February 2006, 20:51

We have studied the specs, but I can't say if we will or will not support it.

mfagan # 9. February 2006, 22:16

Well if you have any questions about any of it, you're welcome to visit the OpenSearch mailing list: http://opensearch.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

sando # 2. May 2006, 08:20

I appear to have broken my "Find in Page search" by replacing it with froogle (I though I was just replacing the shortcut in the address bar, because i always have the Find in page box on my personal bar).

How do I get it back?

SirCasey # 4. May 2006, 13:51

Why is the Search Buttons dialog limited to 18 searches when the limit of searches is 50?

Right click a toolbar, Customize > Buttons > Search screen

Picture here:
http://my.opera.com/SirCasey/albums/showpic.dml?album=65480&picture=801350

I would love to have *all* my searches available here.

SirCasey # 4. May 2006, 15:02

@sando:

Find your search.ini file and add the following in a good location (meaning watch the Search Engine numbers):


[Search Engine 6]
Name=Find in Page Search
URL=
Query=
Key=
Encoding=utf-8
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Search Type=12
Position=0

Alternately (and much easier) use the Opera Search Editor:
http://opera-info.xorg.pl/en/

ikar50 # 24. June 2006, 09:44

I use Mac , tried Opera9 final version , click on " create search " to no avail , other methods of adding search engine do not work .

xErath # 25. July 2006, 05:20

Searches still aren't orderable.
Still not possible to add separators...

bubbah # 28. May 2007, 22:14

would be better if the tool allowed reorder of search engines so they appear in the pull down the way you wish ...also, would like to be able to save the ones deleted in case you wanna put them back up later!!

d_01 # 12. September 2007, 06:45

didn`t know, its great! tnx!

pico99 # 27. December 2008, 14:24

What about adding the icon for a search?

I copied this line from search.ini in my opera folder (not my profile folder) and it worked:
ICON=http://redir.opera.com/favicons/google/favicon.ico

However, this line does not work:
ICON=http://ttl60m.dp.infospace.com.edgesuite.net/dogpile/ws/260/favicon.ico

I also saved this icon file and tried this:
ICON=favicon.ico

and this:
ICON=file://localhost/c:/opera/profiles/pico99/favicon.ico

What's the secret?