FireFox ESR 38

[ElderDryas]

Updated to FF 38 ESR (thru gslapt on Salix 14.1 XFCE), started with no ~/.mozilla (starting fresh).

Search engine settings contain only DDG. I could find no way to add other search engines (yahoo, google, bing, etc.) (this may be my fault/problem, I've been known to be dense before .

Restarted FF with my old ~/.mozilla. Still only DDG (of the normal, expected default search engines)...but one that I added under FF 31 ESR (youtube) showed up.

So:
1) Is this the expected configuration for FF 38 ESR on Salix (on other distros FF configurations (38/39) there were the standard search engines).
2) What did I miss in "how to add search engines to the menu" (i.e., help me be less dense)?

EDIT: OK, I figured out how to add engines like youtube (small + sign in the glass), but still can't add things like yahoo/bing/google).

[witek]

I had the similar problem and I found out that one can download search engines via:
preferences/search/add more search engines (at the bottom of the page)

The engines are downloaded into the user`s directory:

Code: Select all

 /home/_user_name_/.mozilla/firefox/_profile_name_/searchplugins/

System-wide plugins are in this direcory

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/firefox-38esr/browser/searchplugins

One can copy the plugins from one directory to another in order to have them available for all users

[gapan]

The way search engines work in Firefox has changed considerably since the last ESR. If I remember correctly this was introduced with Firefox 34. As a "security feature" mozilla does not allow any other engine except the ones added by mozilla itself. It is now impossible to just add our own search engines on top of the existing ones. A workaround is to remove all default search engines and add the ones we want.

Users can click on the search icon, select "Change search settings" and add any other search engine they like though. Including google (I just did exactly that).

[ElderDryas]

preferences/search/add more search engines (at the bottom of the page)

OK, I said I was dense...

I swear that "Add more search engines..." was not there last night, really (but it had been a long day)! I know I'm probably wrong, that it really was, but I looked and looked and looked (knowing that that was exactly what I was looking for (from using it before)).

Mea Culpa, my appologies...time to slink back to the dungeon.

Thanks gapan and witek.

EDIT: Hmmm...looks like my mouse's scroll button is now "hit and miss". Probably why I missed the "Add more..." line at the bottom, it just would not scroll down that far. Still my fault, but....

[john256]

Search engine settings contain only DDG. I could find no way to add other search engines (yahoo, google, bing, etc.)

Much easier is to just use the DDG "bang" syntax": type in the address bar "!y some_search_term_" and you will be redirected to search.yahoo.com searching for some_search_term. The same with google ("!g search_word") and bing ("!b some_word"). Quite powerful, eh

[gapan]

Exactly! Here's a list of all available bangs: https://duckduckgo.com/bang

edit: oops, just saw that john256 also posted a link.