4 ms·

Is there some way to add a big list of search keywords to Firefox without having to type them one by one in the settings screen? I've been trying to figure out

by ufo 6y ago

Is there some way to add a big list of search keywords to Firefox without having to type them one by one in the settings screen? I've been trying to figure out how to do this for years now with no luck.

chrismorgan 6y ago
1. Open the bookmarks view (probably Menu → Library → Bookmarks or Ctrl+Shift+B; not sure on macOS). 2. In the toolbar, within the Import & Backup menu button, use Backup… or Export Bookmarks to HTML…. 3. Observe the file format (JSON for one, HTML for the other) and replicate its effects for all the items you wish to add. 4. Restore or import your new bookmarks. I haven’t actually done this for over a decade. I suspect the backup/restore route might replace all bookmarks and the export/import route might just add new bookmarks, but I don’t know. What I’d really like is an extension that could manage all of these (sync with DuckDuckGo’s bangs, allow enabling and disabling individually, by group, &c., renaming bangs), but Mozilla have said “We have no plans to allow adding search engine dynamically via WebExtensions. We've had too many problems with hijacking.” (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268401#c37 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268401#c37.) So anything like this would need to be a program that could run locally and either mess with Firefox’s databases directly (places.sqlite, I think), or provide you with the relevant files for you to import manually. I’ve thought of making such a thing, but I’ve not done it yet. Part of the reason is lack of a good data source: for using DuckDuckGo bangs, you need a list that includes the destination of each bang, which I don’t think they provide in any principled way, so you’d be left just polling them.
- ufo 6y ago
  I hadn't thought about the search highjacking problem but it does help explain why Mozilla is intentionally making it harder to mess with the search engine settings. It does sound like an external program would be the only way to do it...

by ufo 6y ago

chrismorgan 6y ago

1. Open the bookmarks view (probably Menu → Library → Bookmarks or Ctrl+Shift+B; not sure on macOS). 2. In the toolbar, within the Import & Backup menu button, use Backup… or Export Bookmarks to HTML…. 3. Observe the file format (JSON for one, HTML for the other) and replicate its effects for all the items you wish to add. 4. Restore or import your new bookmarks. I haven’t actually done this for over a decade. I suspect the backup/restore route might replace all bookmarks and the export/import route might just add new bookmarks, but I don’t know. What I’d really like is an extension that could manage all of these (sync with DuckDuckGo’s bangs, allow enabling and disabling individually, by group, &c., renaming bangs), but Mozilla have said “We have no plans to allow adding search engine dynamically via WebExtensions. We've had too many problems with hijacking.” (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268401#c37 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268401#c37.) So anything like this would need to be a program that could run locally and either mess with Firefox’s databases directly (places.sqlite, I think), or provide you with the relevant files for you to import manually. I’ve thought of making such a thing, but I’ve not done it yet. Part of the reason is lack of a good data source: for using DuckDuckGo bangs, you need a list that includes the destination of each bang, which I don’t think they provide in any principled way, so you’d be left just polling them.

ufo 6y ago
I hadn't thought about the search highjacking problem but it does help explain why Mozilla is intentionally making it harder to mess with the search engine settings. It does sound like an external program would be the only way to do it...