We wanted to give our readers a heads up that we are officially launching the CyberSearch Firefox extension tomorrow morning, but you can get your hands on it right now! It is based on the original version of AwesomeSearch, which is now called Searchery. We had contacted the developer of that extension with some of the ideas that we had, but unfortunately we never heard back from him. Since we saw just how useful something like this would be we went ahead and developed it.
What is CyberSearch? It makes it possible to perform Google searches right from the Firefox 3 address bar (screenshot below), and you instantly see the top eight results from Google. The real power, however, doesn’t emerge until you start using the keyword system. Using a keyword you can restrict a search to any site(s), such as Wikipedia and/or CyberNet. It’s still using Google to power all of the searches, but you can essentially create a site-specific search engine with our keyword system.
The official launch is tomorrow morning, and that’s when we’ll go through the extension more in-depth. Tomorrow you’ll be able to see a bunch of screenshots, and even watch a video tutorial on how the extension works. Until then here’s a brief list of features for you to chew on:
- Supports multiple Google Services (web, local, blog, news, and more)
- Customizable keywords
- You can restrict searches to specific sites
- Specify custom icons on a per-keyword basis
- Alter the appearance of the results
- Retrieve multiple pages of results
- Hides typical “history” results when using a keyword
- and more!
What’s going on in the screenshot below? We’ve created a customized keyword called “w” that we are using to only show results from the English Wikipedia site.
Like what you see? Then go ahead and download the CyberSearch extension from Mozilla. This extension is still experimental, which means you’ll need to login to the Mozilla site before being able to install it. If you don’t have a login you can use a generic one that I’ve created over at Mozilla:
- Username: firefox@cybernetnews.com
- Password: cybernetnews
UPDATE: The video demonstration, features, and more can now be found here.
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Tags: Firefox, Freeware, Software, CyberSearch, Downloads, Features, Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions
Related Posts:
- CyberSearch 1.0.2: Pull Up Google Results Page Faster
- CyberSearch 0.9.6 Update
- Invalid File Hash When Installing a Firefox Extension
- Helpful Tip: Getting More out of CyberSearch Keywords
- CyberSearch 1.0.1: Background Colors are Back
Sorry, still prefer having a separate search bar.
I’m sure that a lot of people will still want to use the search box, but I have always found myself using keywords in the address bar for doing my searching (even prior to this extension). One of the nice things with using the address bar to show the live results is that the title and URL are clearly visible, which would be more difficult if using the search box given its rather compact size.
has opera already got this?
Great idea…Congratulations!
It must be pretty exciting creating your first Firefox extension…I look forward to giving it a whirl.
Nope, no browser will let you see instant search results like this from the address bar. Things like this could detract from their revenue since it bypasses the search page all together, and so they will likely never implement something like this.
It is pretty exciting having our first Firefox extension out there. I just never wanted to create something that I wasn’t going to use myself.
Wouldn’t giving out the username/password effect the rating/downloads/popularity of the add-on (because the downloads will be from the same account) ?
Nice addon btw..
I’m not sure if they use that info to determine how many times an add-on has been downloaded. I don’t think they would.
Glad you like the extension!
Great extension Ryan!
Now I can search Newegg much faster!
Color me impressed!
I’ve been a long-time keyword search user, so I’m diggin’ it.
I am really digging this extension.
There are a few recommendations I would like to make though,
01. I would like to see a separate field for keyword and keyword name,
a lot of people just use one letter for there keywords (i.e. w = wikipedia, i = imdb, g = google, etc.)
But using these for the keywords names could you confusing, so a system such as Keyword = W, Keyword Name = Wikipedia would be perfect.
02. The option to import your already saved search keywords. I currently have 68 keyword searches (yes, I am a junkie) and it would be nice to be able to import them.
03. Another cool add-on for Firefox, the Awesomer Bar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7702), add the functionality to show the favicon for your keyword searches in the normal favicon spot, unfortunately this extension seems to overide it though.
So it would be really nice to either add this feature to this extension or, make it so that the two extensions play nice together.
I could see this extension being one of my must haves for firefox
A bug: when you enter “goog cybernetnews” to the address bar and press enter you get a Google search for “goog cybernetnews” and for “cybernetnews” as expected.
A feature request: there should be a Google Web Search without “I’m feeling lucky” option at the search services.
Anyway it looks promising.
After using it for a while, I really love it! My main browser is opera but this is making me want to use FF3 more and more.
One little bug though:
If you enable ‘Dont perform a search without keyword..’ then when entering text in address bar, the “Loading..” icon in favicon area stays there forever.
Also, there is a typo in Appearance/Resul appearance text..
Meanwhile I realized that CyberSearch doesn’t handle Enter press in address bar at all. So you have to duplicate your keyword searches.
I thought about that as well, and that’s why the drop-down menu shows the URL(s) that are associated with the keyword. I didn’t want to clutter the interface by adding another field for a name.
That could be possible, but it likely won’t work as people would expect. Current keywords in the browser often look like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....#038;go=Go , and with this I would have to trim off everything except the domain. That wouldn’t always work for some sites that aren’t located at the root of the domain.
I’ll look into whether I can override that extension’s icon picking.
If you press enter without selecting any of the results the browser will perform a search just as it would if the extension was not installed. That’s why a search for “goog cybernetnews” was done.
There is no way for us to handle keyword searches since we use Google for doing our searches, and Firefox itself uses a site’s built-in search capabilities. The official launch article that we posted this morning kinda explains that because we didn’t want to interfere with the keyword searches that people have already created.
I’m having a hard time duplicating that bug. What operating system are you using?
Took me a few minutes to find it since you didn’t specify where the typo was, but I’m guessing you’re referring to the misspelling of “maximum” in the help box?
Fantastic that you’ve found the time to create this extension! Installing right away
The problem was once I got into writing the extension I really got into it. So I didn’t really find time to work on it… I more or less made time to work on it.
Windows XP SP3. here is a little video of the bug- http://www.fileupyours.com/vie.....ch_Bug.swf
Thanks for the nice screencast “x”. I see what you’re talking about now, and I’ll have to see if there’s some way I can get around that.
Update: I’ve fixed this bug, and it will be in the next release (among other bug fixes and features). I plan on publishing it tomorrow or Tuesday. Thanks again for the screencast… it helped a lot.