Get your Oolite Bulletin Board browser search plugin here!

[Eric Walch]

Ok, I've worked out how to do it using Safari, although this will only work for Safari on Macintosh's, not Windows, as Inquisitor is not available for the Windows version of Safari, even though it is for IE and FF, go figure... (To make this tutorial, I used Inquisitor installed to Internet Explorer, though I imagine (hope?) that it should work much the same for the Mac version.)

I just installed it on the mac in Safari. Two things are different than your excellent manual:

- The settings are not attached to the search field but are found in the regular Safari preferences. (But you already hinted that this could be the case)


- The search string you gave is not correct. Or more precise: the replacement string <TERM> should be %@. so the sitename you must fill in for a Google search becomes:

Code: Select all

http://www.google.com/search?&q=%@+site%3Aaegidian.org%2Fbb%2F

But maybe it is just because the current version of the Inquititor has changed this. As you see at the bottom of the dialogue, its telling about this.

But as everyone will download the current version you probably should change this in your above manual. Also the "add" button is just a "+" button as seen above.

[Eric Walch]

I just upgraded to Safari 5.0 and noticed it is not fully compatible with the current release of inquisitor. Under Safari 4.x you got the inquisitor search menu instead of Safaries own menu, but with 5.0 you get both simultaneously, with Safaries search field own on top.

However, when stepping out of the search window and than explicit click on the search icon, you only get the inquisitor menu. So, actually you can use both now. I somehow hope inquisitor is not updated to fix this unintended feature

[docwild]

There is another way of doing it with Mozilla browsers using a custom keyword for a bookmark.

1.Press Ctrl-B for bookmark manager
2.Right click and select "New Bookmark"
3. Name: Oolite bulletin board search
Location: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en ... rg%2Fbb+%s
Keyword: ool
4. Save

Now, press Ctrl-L to select address bar, type "ool pulse lasers" and press enter
EDIT: without the quotes, unless you want to type: ool "pulse lasers" , which works and has slightly different behaviour from: ool pulse lasers .

This has been around for a long time on Firefox so I wouldn't be surprised if it works on Safari, IE, Opera and Chrome.

[snork]

[re: "on energy bombs" , because I feel it might be impolite not to answer, but that topic already had it's fair share of derailment]

Because the forum's own search engine is utterly, utterly useless....

Heh, yeah... it ain't the best. Use Diziet Sma's search plug-in... that works a treat!

That is a pity - with the board being so very responsive, and no "search flood control" blocking me, I usually find what I am looking for using the boards search feature (1st search with strict settings, if no results : search again (and again) with broadening criteria)

Hm, with Google I can not search "in topic titles only", "in expansions forum section only", "by user:someone" and such.
And I usually am useless at narrowing things down from a million hits to the dozen I was hoping to find.

Thus searching site:h*tp://aegidian.org/bb/ for +energy +bomb gives me about 1800 results, and to show how much google hates me : for "energy bomb" google shows 2580 results. (to my understanding it should be less results, not more. bah!)
Though strange enough - both searches have the topic I was actually looking for listed as 4th result.
Hm, maybe it is time to switch to the dark side(s).

* pro-tip : do not dump Larry's favourite goddaughter after the 1st date.

[Eric Walch]

Thus searching site:h*tp://aegidian.org/bb/ for +energy +bomb gives me about 1800 results,

Interesting. When I type your search I also get 1800 results. But when I use the search button for a google search on this site it produces the following search request: "+energy +bomb site:https://bb.oolite.space/" with only 1620 hits. The difference is in the '*' symbol in the http. But are there pages on this site not on http?

Anyhow, for safari 5.x there is now a 'custom search' extension that is very user friendly and certainly worth installing.

[Commander McLane]

Does someone have an idea why this topic is not found when I do a search for energy bombs (search for all terms, all forums, in topic titles only) ?

Because the forum's own search engine is utterly, utterly useless....

This I don't understand. If I do this


I get this


It's the very first result. Note that the results are usually listed in reverse order of post time (newest result first), so you may have to browse through a couple of pages of results in order to find a thread which has not had a post in almost two years, especially if the search words are being used quite frequently. For instance, other than your own new posts, the "On energy bombs" thread first pops up on page 9 of the search results.

Personally I have never used anything but the in-built board tool for searching, and I've usually found everything I was looking for. So I can't say that it's utterly useless for me.

If I would wish something for improvement, I'd say that the "Post subjects and message text"-option be replaced with "Topic titles and message text". That would in this case have found the latest post in the thread, not only the last post which also had the search words. I have never used the subject line in a post myself, and I have made a fair number of posts. Usually it contains the topic title in these cases, but then a direct search in the topic title would still make more sense.

[snork]

The difference is in the '*' symbol in the http. But are there pages on this site not on http?

I only put the * so the board would not make a clickable link from it. Sorry, I did not mean to confuse anyone with this.

This I don't understand. If I do this [...] It's the very first result.

For me, too, now, with new posts added. (actually the 2nd result, this topic here now having been the first)

The more general the searchterm (e.g. energy), or the more likely to appear in topics that do not focus on the searchterm subject (e.g. Griff) the more I like to search in "Topic titles only".
In the hope to find the official topic for some oxp for example, and not every other "what oxps do you recommend" topic.

And this searching "Topic titles only" does not work in this case. Usually I do find the topics I want to find with this option.

[Mauiby de Fug]

There have been occasions when it has utterly failed to find posts that I personally wrote and recall the wording of, and have had to go through the "View your posts" option and trawl my way through all that to find things...

On the occasions when I've actually remembered to use the plugin, it's worked very well indeed.

[Eric Walch]

There have been occasions when it has utterly failed to find posts that I personally wrote and recall the wording of,

yes, a good example of this is when you look were the exact phrase "Right on commander" is used. With the internal search I find 4771 hits but at least on the first two pages I don't find that exact phrase at all

With a google search I get 5520 hits and all contain the exact wording.

That google find more hits that the internal search also means that a lot matches are missing despite the addition of a lot of junk matches.

[m4r35n357]

There have been occasions when it has utterly failed to find posts that I personally wrote and recall the wording of, and have had to go through the "View your posts" option and trawl my way through all that to find things...

Ditto I always have trouble finding that gnustep defaults setting that flushes the cache too, every single time . . .

[JensAyton]

I always have trouble finding that gnustep defaults setting that flushes the cache too, every single time . . .

[wiki]Hidden Settings in Oolite[/wiki] :-)

[m4r35n357]

I always have trouble finding that gnustep defaults setting that flushes the cache too, every single time . . .

[wiki]Hidden Settings in Oolite[/wiki]

That's the feller - let's just hope I remember the phrase next time Is it linked from anywhere?

[JensAyton]

That's the feller - let's just hope I remember the phrase next time ;) Is it linked from anywhere?

The index.

[m4r35n357]

The index.

OK cheers, I'll stop digging now if you don't mind

[JazHaz]

Does anyone know how to use the plugins for Chrome? Try as I might, I can't work out how to do a search.