Redelijkheid.com as a FireFox Search Engine

While the content on my website increases, it's getting (a bit) harder to find certain content. Sure, there's this search form in the top right of the website, but this means that you have to open the website first, enter the keyword and hit 'Enter'.

To speed things up I created a custom FireFox search engine. Using this I can search for content on my website directly from the browser. No matter what site I'm currently on.

The custom search engines are located in the profiles directory.

OSX: ~/Library/Application Data/Firefox/profiles/<random>/searchplugins/<searchengine>.xml

Windows: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random>\searchplugins\<searchengine>.xml

By adding the following XML file (right-click - Save As) to the directory listed above, you add the Redelijkheid.com search engine to your Firefox search engines.

You can create your own custom search engine, just by altering the data in the XML file.

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/" xmlns:moz="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Redelijkheid</ShortName>
<Description>Redelijkheid.com Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,
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PT09PT09PT09PT09PT09PT09PT09PT09PT3/wAARCAAQABADASEAAhEBAxEB/8QAHwAAAQUBAQEB
AQEAAAAAAAAAAAECAwQFBgcICQoL/8QAtRAAAgEDAwIEAwUFBAQAAAF9AQIDAAQRBRIhMUEGE1Fh
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x8jJytLT1NXW19jZ2uHi4+Tl5ufo6erx8vP09fb3+Pn6/8QAHwEAAwEBAQEBAQEBAQAAAAAAAAEC
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CSMzUvAVYnLRChYkNOEl8RcYGRomJygpKjU2Nzg5OkNERUZHSElKU1RVVldYWVpjZGVmZ2hpanN0
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</Image>
<moz:SearchForm>/</moz:SearchForm>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="/?s={searchTerms}">
</Url>
</SearchPlugin>

The only 'rocket science' here is the icon you see when selecting the search engine. The easiest way is to download the favicon image most sites have nowadays. You can download those by going to http://<website>/favicon.ico.

Save the image (on your desktop e.g.), and convert the image to a BASE64 encoded format. Copy the resulting BASE64 string in the XML file (replacing my own image, marked red), and you can save the XML file to the location mentioned earlier.

After restarting Firefox, you should be able to select the newly created custom search engine in Firefox. Very handy for website you visit a lot.

An alternative is to add the following code to the headers of your webpage:

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="searchTitle" href="pluginURL">

Where searchTitle is the shortname (as used in the actual XML file) of the custom search engine, and pluginURL is the location where the XML file is located.

The search engine will now show up on the Firefox search pull down menu when you visit the website.

Add it, and you're good to go.