Atomic Ninja Labs

Shortwave Search.

Monday 07 July, 2008

A command-based Firefox search plugin for Shaun Inman’s Shortwave.

After spending a little time getting up to speed in creating Firefox Search Plugins, I’ve crafted a Mozilla search plugin to drive Shaun Inman’s Shortwave, a command based online search tool.

“Shortwave is an extensible quick-search and shortcut system like Firefox’s Smart Keywords or Safari Stand’s Quick Search..”

The bookmarklet is great concept and is highly portable. However developers have spent time successively removing bookmark keyboard commands from each new Firefox version. Shortwave Search integrates functionality back it into the built-in Firefox search function.

Quick, Robin, to the Install.

You can install the default version, which uses the Shortwave hosted default search from here (fixed!):

›› Install Shortwave.

I’ve added the search to the un-official official search engines at Mozilla HQ:

›› Shortwave search addon at mozilla.org.

Alternatively (or if the above links do not automatically add the search) save the following XML file to the appropriate searchplugins folder, as listed here, then restart your browser.

Making it BIGGER.

If you have created your own custom waves.txt and would prefer to use that by defualt, then edit the above linked shortwaveapp.xml and append the following after {searchterms}:

&s=http://yourdomainname.com/path/to/waves.txt

Note — I have included an example (commented) for a self-hosted waves.txt in the manual download verson above, for further reference.

Which button, Jim?

You can prefix any search terms with the desired action, entering help will present the currently defined commands — for example prefixing a search with g will trigger a google search. Conversely prefixing the same search with a would ask the same question to Amazon.

Using the built-in Control + K keyboard combo (Cmd + K if you’re in Mac land) makes that search even faster.

To make Shortwave the default browser search engine, browse to about:config (you may be asked to confirm ok) and set the following Firefox pref to Shortwave:

Finally and in conclusion.

This is a reasonably simple implementation — it should work in Firefox and most other Mozilla based browsers that support the OpenSearch standard.

Special thanks also go to Mr Inman for developing this brilliant tool and for the permission to share the search plugin.

Black Ops.

Thursday 19 June, 2008

The boffins at Atomic Ninja Labs are occasionally called upon to assist others with design and project work as well as bang spanners on personal side projects — this is a rough journal, or store-house as it were of recent creative designs, experiments and more-or-less stable code.

The lab boffins are not-for-hire, however may consider contributing to projects that take their fancy. Shiny toys and devices that go bing may tempt the monkeys out from The Lab.

Presenting in no particular order, the whirlwind sixty-second tour (frequent course language and nudity not included):

Recent design work.

Amateur Neurotica — a simple blue design, with a focus on clear serif-based typography. Text sizes are intentionally beefed up for legibility and to help accentuate white space.

Atomic Ninja Labs — home base and test-centre for crazy caffeine obsessed boffins. Designed to be an easily read source of news, views and generally crazed talk.

101 Fun uses for XML.

Shortwave Search — a Firefox search plugin for Shaun Inman’s fantastic Shortwave javascript powered bookmarklet and command driven meta-search tool.

Got Qurli?

Get Qurli — a simple, fast and friendly service to turn stupidly long and unmanageable URLs into svelte short links. Spreading the ‘curly’ love, one link at a time.

If you have comments to make on the above, or would like to engage a boffin in discussion over pretty much any project or pretence, please do make contact using the form below.

If you prefer to drive email (and who doesn’t) try the make contact link in the footer below.

Thank you and goodnight.

Wordpress Code.

Monday 17 March, 2008

A collection of themes, plugins, geekery and code originally developed for Wordpress, presently stabled here.

You can either jump straight into the plugin repository, or check out the themes if you want to skip straight to the good stuff.

Please note that the links above are to resources which are no longer updated with any regularity.